


What is Lost

by bedlamsbard



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 10:25:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't go home again, and you can't hide from the past.  Ten years after Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker doesn't want anything to do with the Jedi or the Empire, but that doesn't mean they don't want him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Jocasta Nu. Shaak Ti. Cin Drallig. Jurokk. Four Jedi masters against ten thousand clones. It was a suicide mission._

_The Jedi had no choice._

_“Let me_ stay _,” Anakin said desperately. “I’m a better fighter than any of you. I can buy Bene and the others time. You_ need _me.”_

_Drallig’s strong hand closed on his shoulder. “We need you_ alive _, Skywalker. You and all the younglings, all the Padawans. You’re our future. Us, we’re old. We’re the past. Save them – take them somewhere safe, away from Coruscant, back to their families – and you save the Jedi. Do you understand me?”_

_Anakin looked down at the elaborately tiled floor. “Yes,” he said, in a very small voice. “But –”_

_“Obi-Wan would want you alive, Anakin,” Shaak Ti said, voice as calm as if she was lecturing a classroom of younglings. “Always remember that.”_

_Nu swept into the Great Hall. “The Databanks have been wiped,” she said briskly, only a hint of pain in her librarian’s voice. “No Sith will ever have_ all _the Jedi’s secrets. The Archives are locked – forever, if need be.”_

_The four masters moved to arrange themselves in a straight line across the front of the Great Hall, lightsabers in their hands, but still unlit._

_The thump of booted feet echoed through the Temple._

_“They’re coming,” Jurokk said unnecessarily._

_“So they are,” Ti observed calmly. “Anakin, the power, if you please. Then go. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”_

_Anakin raised his hand – his flesh hand, not his metal one. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went out, plunging them all into darkness. Not simply in the Great Hall, but all through the Temple. He’d done this once by accident when he was fourteen; now he did it on purpose._

_Night fell on the Jedi._

_Anakin backed away toward the back of the Hall, unlit lightsaber leaping to his hand. He head still hurt, less and less with every minute that passed; Jedi still fought and died on other planets, but there were fewer of them now. Now, the fight had come to Coruscant itself. To the Temple. To the very heart of the Jedi._

__There is no emotion, there is peace. __

_Ships were taking off from the Temple, filled to the brim with younglings and Padawans, piloted by knights and senior Padawans. Other, smaller groups were spreading through the city, looking for Jedi sympathizers, quick ways to get off the planet – somewhere to run to. Somewhere to hide. Anakin had to get to his own ship, his own younglings. He had to get off-planet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the four Jedi masters preparing to die in front of him._

__There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. __

_The doors opened abruptly. Anakin saw the dark familiar shape of clone troopers there, lit by the lights of the city behind them._

_One by one, four lightsabers sizzled into life. Four Jedi masters stood as one, faces lit by the ghostly glow of their blades._

_“You shall not pass,” Jedi Master Shaak Ti said._

__There is no passion, there is serenity. __

_The sound of blasters was the clones’ only reply. Lightsabers moved only as blurs, but several bolts made it past. Anakin’s lightsaber sprang into life in his hand._

_“Skywalker!” Jurokk yelled, breaking the spell. “_ Run _!”_

_Anakin ran._

_Clones made it past the masters and followed him, out to the landing docks of the Temple. There were still younglings in the hall, gathered together under the tutelage of older Padawans._

_“_ Run _!” Anakin yelled, and turned back. He could do what he’d said he would. He could buy them time to run and hide – to_ live _. His lightsaber swept the air around him, parried back blaster bolts, sheered through clone armor and flesh and bone. He fell into battle trance, unaware of anything except the swing of his lightsaber._

__There is no chaos, there is harmony. __

_When he came out of the trance, dead clones littered the floor around him. Not all the dead were clones, though – Anakin saw Padawans riddled with blaster holes, lightsabers still in their hands – even_ younglings _, dead in the halls of the Temple. Some held their own lightsabers, others had snatched up their fallen comrades’. Some even held clone blasters._

_All of them were dead. Anakin stared at them blankly, lightsaber in his hand. Why hadn’t they run? He’d_ told _them to_ run. __

_More footsteps – the thud of booted feet in unison. The clone troopers had made it past the line of Jedi masters._

_There were still younglings in his ship, waiting for him. Anakin Skywalker turned and ran._

-  
-

Of the planets that had been involved in the Ten Systems War some years earlier, Ixtapa had probably come through the best; only one major battle had been fought there and that had been on the small eastern continent, which boasted, rather than a population of respectable citizens, a population made up mostly of smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, and fugitives from Imperial justice. Still, the Battle of Ixtapa hadn’t been so bad as such things went; it hadn’t devastated the planet, as some of the battles fought in-galaxy during the Clone Wars had, and the continent was still occupied – roughly the same members of the population that had been there before the battle and some time before the war as well.

The capital of the continent was Per Macchu; smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called in its years as host to the worst of the Outer Rim. It served as refueling station to any number of semi-legal ships on their way through the Outer Rim, as well as boasting a booming market in slaves and other illegal goods: Imperial weaponry, drugs, and the odd pirated starship. As such planets went Ixtapa was as good as any of the others, and better in some cases: unlike Tatooine, it wasn’t ruled by the Hutts, and unlike Kyr, it didn’t have a civil war tearing up the planet. Distant from Mid Rim edge of the Outer Rim as it was, it also garnered little if any Imperial presence, not being an Empire planet or worth adding to the Empire’s small collection of Outer Rim planets. For anyone planning on avoiding the Empire, it was a good place to hide.

One of Per Macchu’s many cantinas, this one on the edge of the Traitor’s District downtown, was The Sand and Stone, run by a Ten Systems vet and Ixtapan native called Zsuzsi Dj’onz. She served any number of disreputable types, some more regularly than others, and one of these regulars actually lived in The Sand and Stone, renting a room above the cantina for almost as long as the business had been in Zsuzsi’s seven-fingered hands. He’d fought in the ending days of the Ten Systems War with her; although he hadn’t come to the Outer Rim until the last year of the war, she’d known him for a fellow war vet even before he’d picked up a blaster. Clone Wars, he’d told her later, and flashed a blinding grin, one that was tinged with more sorrow than he’d probably meant. With the fighting done he made his living the same way most of the Outer Rim did: hovering on the edge of the legal and sometimes outright illegal, though really, neither one existed in more than name out here. Unlike most of the other guns for hire in Per Macchu, though, Zsuzsi trusted him, despite – or maybe because of – the bitter twist to Nakin’s scarred face, the sense that he’d seen and done more than even she’d ever dreamed of – and all of it the right thing, or close enough to pass on the Rim. Honor was a rare quality out here, almost nonexistent, but he had more of it than any other being she’d ever met.

-  
-

“Get your damn feet off my table, Starkiller,” Zsuzsi snapped, flicking a raggedy towel at his boots. Nakin took them down, grinning lazily.

“And here I thought you loved me, Dj’onz,” he said amiably, picking up his glass of tsa-tsa juice and swirling it around. When he knocked it back, it stained his teeth the crimson red of bright blood.

“I love your credits,” Zsuzsi informed him, sweeping the towel over the spot on the table where his boots had been resting. “The rest of you I can take or leave. Especially your dirt.”

Nakin squinted at the bottom of his boots. “This isn’t dirt,” he said indignantly. “This is sand.” He squinted some more. “From Chiang, probably,” he added. “Last planet I went to where the port was in a desert.” He rolled his shoulders back and Zsuzsi winced at the pops she heard.

“Not that I care or anything, but you oughta take better care of yourself. Keep the rest of your body from going the way of that pretty face of yours.”

Nakin ran a hand reflexively over the ruined skin of his face. “I dive out one window –”

“One window that’s glass, not transparisteel, and that stuff shatters. And how many feet up did you say it was?”

“Too many,” he said shortly, still touching the fine tracery of scars over his face. He took his hand away and picked up the glass again, frowning at the remaining skin of juice on the bottom of it. “When’s the next shipment of tsa-tsa coming in? It’s had to have been at least three months since the Duurs were here last.”

Tsa-tsa was native to the western coast of the north-northeastern continent and, despite numerous attempts to grow it elsewhere, only grew to its natural strength in its native environment. Half a dozen times a standard year the migratory Duur traders came through Per Macchu with their shiploads of goods from all across the planet, and for the week or so they stayed the Mil Maiaya market never closed, even after Ixtapa’s twin suns went down.

Zsuzsi shrugged, the old wound in her shoulder aching with the movement. Storm coming in, maybe. She glanced out the window at the pale sky, discerning the dark shape of clouds in the distance, closing in from the mountain on the savannah. “Nothing’s going to be able to land in a storm,” she said with feeling; the army’d had to land on the savannah in a storm once, years ago. They’d lost more ships than they’d landed.

Nakin stood up and came over. “Nothing I like better than a little bit of hell on my front porch,” he said dryly. “Never thought I’d see anything worse than a Tatooine sandstorm till I came here, but hey, what do you know. Nothing natural, anyway,” he added, shadow on his face for a moment before he shook it away. He picked up a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table and bit into it, eyes on the coming storm. It’d be here by the evening, maybe; the next morning at the latest. On the savannah you could forecast the weather days in advance.

The door of the cantina banged open and Zsuzsi turned, plastering a smile onto her face. “Hey,” she said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”

The newcomer walked like he had a plasma rifle up his ass, Zsuzsi noted silently, and he was packing. She could see the holster beneath the line of his jacket. “I was told I could find a Nakin Starkiller here?” he said, looking at the almost empty room dubiously. Most of Zsuzsi’s regulars were out so late in the morning, and Nakin was the only other one there, due to his abnormal sleep habits.

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s him. Try not to piss him off; he hasn’t finished paying off the last damage he did to the place yet. You planning to order something while you breathe my air?”

He flicked an eye at the menu on the edge of the bar, looking vaguely bewildered by the no doubt unfamiliar list of foods and drinks. “Something to drink,” he said, and flipped a couple of credits over to her.

Zsuzsi caught them in the air. “Coming right up,” she said.

She caught the murmur of their conversation as she dug around in the cooler, coming up with a jug of cariik juice and a clean glass along with a few rare ice cubes. Nakin was threatening him, as was to be expected. He made a career out of threatening people, and somehow managed not to piss them off permanently when he did so.

“Because,” he was saying, a little of his Tatooine drawl in his voice now, something Zsuzsi hadn’t heard until years after they’d met, “I’m just that good.”

“He is, too,” Zsuzsi said, sliding the stranger’s drink over to him. “No one better. Is he trying to hire you for smuggling or mechanics?” she asked Nakin.

“The latter,” Nakin drawled. “We got a deal?” That was to the stranger, who’d picked up his glass and was sipping it, looking pleased.

“Yeah,” he said. “Can you come now?”

“Sure,” Nakin said. He snatched a cariik from the bowl in front of him as he stood, moving toward the stairs. “Just let me grab my kit and I’ll be right out.”

Zsuzsi rested her hip against the side of the booth. “So,” she said, tray tucked under her arm, “you from off-planet?”

“Yeah,” the stranger said. He held out a hand toward her. “Jer Traynt. Nice to meet you.”

“Zsuzsi Dj’onz,” she replied, shaking his hand with her free one. “You’re not from the Outer Rim, are you?”

“Alderaan,” Nakin said from the stairs. “Mountain district, if I’m not mistaken. That right, Lieutenant Traynt?”

Traynt raised his head, looking startled. “How did you know?”

“I spent some time in the Core when I was a kid,” Nakin said casually. “I can tell an Alderaan accent when I hear one. And an Imperial officer.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, having shrugged his jacket on sometime between going upstairs and coming back down. “Let’s go.”

Zsuzsi blinked once. “You’re lucky he’s not in a bad mood,” she told Traynt, keeping the surprise out of her voice. Off-worlders didn’t need to know Ixtapan secrets, even if Nakin wasn’t Ixtapan by birth. “Usually he can’t shut up about how much he hates the Empire.”

His face carefully neutral, Traynt drained the last of his drink and stood up. “What was a Rimmer doing in the Core?”

“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” He nodded at Zsuzsi. “See you, Zsuz. Keep someone for me to beat up, yeah?”

“Don’t stay out too late,” she shot back. “Fight night tonight.”

-  
-

“ _Nice_ ,” Nakin said brightly, slipping a hand along the starcruiser’s sleek side. “Modified Nubian, right? I’ve done some hyperdrive work with these before – how long has this one been battle-fit? The guns might be misbalancing it, which’ll throw off the hyperdrive depending on how much the original design of the ship was changed –”

Traynt and the first lieutenant, Perrik, shared looks of mutual confusion. “The Nubians were commissioned about three years ago,” Perrik said. “The Erebus has been out for about a year now – in-Core work; it’s never been farther out than Naboo in the Mid Rim, where the original modifications were done.”

“That’d do it,” Nakin said absently, eyes and hands still on the ship. “Naboo hyperdrives are designed to work with the shape of the ship itself – there’s enough leeway for small changes, but big changes will definitely throw off the ‘drive, especially in conjunction with a long jump. If that’s what it is, I can fix it, but I’ll have to completely reconfigure the hyperdrive.”

“How long?” Perrik asked crisply.

“Not really sure,” Nakin said. “I’ve never done this before. Shouldn’t be too hard, though. I can fix _anything_.” He leaned down to pick up his toolkit, the old, soft leather automatically curving into the palm of his hand. “Especially with the Empire paying by the hour.”

-  
-

“Is it what you thought it was?” Traynt asked when Starkiller stepped into the bridge, the doors sliding open silently and quickly for him.

“Pretty sure it is, yeah,” Starkiller said, running a hand over his short-clipped blond hair. He’d shed his leather jacket somewhere along the way and was standing in just his shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, gun belt slung low on his hips. He swung a hydrogrip idly back and forth from his other hand.

Traynt turned toward him, back to the databank console. “You _can_ fix it?”

“Sure,” Starkiller said, spinning the hydrogrip up and around his wrist. “I need the schematics for the ship, though. The originals _and_ the modified ones.”

“Of course.” Traynt turned back to the console, pulling up the schematics for the ship. “I’d put them on a chip, but that’s against regulations, so –”

“Never mind that,” Starkiller said, taking his words as an invitation and coming forward to lean over Traynt’s shoulder. “I’ve got a good memory.”

Traynt pushed away from the control board, stepping up towards the holomap on the wall. Imperial ships moved across the galaxy, blinking in and out of hyperspace; the _Erebus_ itself was stationary in the dot labeled _Ixtapa_. He pressed the tip of one gloved finger to it, watching the planet expand to the size of a fist and a scrolling list of its traits appear in midair next to it, the rest of the map shrinking down to a small spiral near the corner of the ceiling.

_…seven continents, five habitable by standard Core humans, including Luminae (also known as the northern continent by the natives), Selket (the northeastern continent), Merapesh (the eastern continent), Xelxerah (the southern continent), and Kimmeriaa (the north-northeastern continent)._

They were on Merapesh. Traynt called up the information on it.

_…capital city is Per Macchu, a small trading city on the edge of the Keklaarah savannah, base for a number of smuggling operations. Likely hideout for Jedi, despite the natives’ animosity for both the Old Republic and the Empire –_

Traynt stopped reading and turned, feeling eyes on his back. Starkiller was still bent over the console, but there was something –

“You know, I’ve never really seen a gun belt on a mechanic before,” he said casually.

Starkiller twisted around slowly, straightening. “Clearly you haven’t been on the Outer Rim very long. Just wait until you see what the whores wear.”

“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.” He leaned forward, one hand on his blaster, unbuckling the strap of the holster, the other behind him, ready to sound an alarm that would alert the rest of the ship. “Because, you see, I’ve never seen a mechanic with a lightsaber.”

“Payment for a job,” Starkiller said easily. His hands were open and empty in front of him; he’d put the hydrogrip down on the edge of the console.

“I don’t think so.”

“Good guess.” All of a sudden Starkiller was in front of him, his fist flying forward into Traynt’s face. Bone didn’t shatter when he connected, but it was enough to send Traynt flying backward into the wall, crumpling down onto the floor.

Starkiller leaned over him, eyes narrowed on concentration. He raised his hands to either side of Traynt’s face. “ _You don’t remember anything_ ,” he said, voice soft and clear and sure, with the crispness of Core World syllables in it now. “ _You tripped and fell._ ”

“I don’t remember anything,” Traynt repeated obediently, murkiness behind his eyes. “I tripped and fell.”

Starkiller leaned over him, face open and honest. “You all right, Lieutenant?” he said. “You took a bad fall.”

Traynt ran a hand over the back of his head, feeling blood on his fingers where he’d hit the wall. “Mmm,” he said. “I should probably –”

“If you have a medic, this would probably be a good time to call him.” Starkiller said.

“You may have a –” Traynt blinked. He remembered – he didn’t. He did. A metal cylinder on Starkiller’s hip – no, two of them, hanging off his gun belt where they’d normally be covered by the fall of his jacket. Abruptly, he snaked an arm around Starkiller’s waist to touch one.

“Hiding something?”

Starkiller jerked back. “Like I told you,” he said carefully, “it was payment for a job. Guy’s starfighter was trashed.”

“I don’t think so,” Traynt said, and hit the alarm.

Starkiller was on his feet in less than a heartbeat, his booted foot coming around to hit Traynt hard in the jaw. When Traynt passed out, he was already spinning his blasters out of their holsters.

Not the lightsabers.

-  
-

Perrik came running at the sound of the alarm, blaster out of its holster and clone troopers flurrying around him. Most of them were carrying tranq guns rather than blasters; they’d come to Ixtapa prepared to neutralize a Jedi, not kill one. It would certainly be enough to take down one mechanic, even a well-armed one.

At least that’s what he was thinking until Nakin Starkiller leapt down out of the starcruiser, blasters in each hand. Perrik turned his charge into a duck and roll out of range, blaster coming up as Starkiller kicked one clone in the face and shot two more, not even glancing to either side as his arms shot straight out and then forward again, taking two more clones with dead center shots in their foreheads. The slower clones, the ones who’d been on guard around the hangar were still running in; they stopped by the doors to aim more carefully.

The first handful of tranq darts went awry. Starkiller batted them out of the air or ducked them or both; Perrik was fairly certain he’d only touched ground to launch himself upward again. Carefully, Perrik sighted down his arm, knowing that all of Starkiller’s attention had to be on the clones, and fired.

Starkiller’s spin kick turned into a controlled fall. He hit the ground and came up again, jamming the butt-end of one of his blasters into the space between helmet and armor of a clone coming up behind him and firing in the same motion. One tranq dark took him in the neck and he spared a moment a moment to yank it out with two fingers, but the next few sprayed him across the front and he didn’t bother taking those out, just went on fighting, kicking and punching and firing his blasters.

Perrik stood up. “Isn’t this stuff supposed act faster?” he demanded of the third lieutenant, Cafferti, who’d come in with the clones out back. He was holding a plasma rifle in one hand

“Thirty seconds,” Cafferti said.

“It’s been two minutes and he hasn’t _blinked_ ,” Perrik snapped as Starkiller’s heel sent a clone flying backwards into two more. “We don’t have enough clones to take this kind of losses, not until Lady Yulalli arrives. Take –”

Starkiller went down. It was abrupt, with no buildup, and Perrik hadn’t seen any of the clones’ blows connect recently, so the drugs must have finally worked their way into his system, at three times the length it should have taken. A Jedi, maybe? But not Hellsbane; Traynt would have recognized him. Perrik stepped over to Starkiller as one of the clones dropped to his knees to tug the blasters out of his hands and put binders on his wrists and saw the lightsabers still clipped to his belt. He hadn’t gone for them, and every Jedi or Jedi trainee Perrik had ever met had gone down fighting with a lightsaber in their hand. Not a Jedi, just a thief.

“Go find Lieutenant Traynt,” he said to Cafferti, who’d stepped up behind him, young face painfully earnest. “See him to a medic if he needs it.”

“Yes, sir!” Cafferti said, and didn’t bother saluting, just dashed up the ramp into the _Erebus._

Perrik squatted down next to Starkiller’s limp body, taking the mechanic’s chin in hand. He hadn’t paid much attention to him when Traynt had brought him in earlier, just registered him as a possible, but improbable, threat and hoped that he’d fix the _Erebus_ before the Dog arrived.

There were scars on Starkiller’s face, a faint spider web of white lines some years old, another, older scar cutting against his right eye, more scars scattered around his mouth and across the curve of his cheek. Perrik cocked his head to one side, trying to remember if he’d seen the face on the Imperial broadsheets or not, and couldn’t. He’d have Cafferti run a picture through the databanks for a match to be sure, but he really doubted they’d turn up something. A Jedi would have gone for his lightsaber, and he wouldn’t have carried two. Perrik let go of Starkiller and unclipped the lightsabers, weighing them in the palm of his hand.

“Take him inside,” he said, nodding towards the cruiser. “Make sure he’s tied down securely. I want to interrogate him when he wakes up.”

-  
-

“Lieutenant,” Hellsbane said without looking up or waiting for Traynt to sit down. “I was wondering when you’d come calling.”

“General Hellsbane,” Traynt returned, sliding into the seat across from him. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”

“You can keep looking a little longer,” Hellsbane said sedately. “You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction, Lieutenant.”

“Not particularly. The Ixtapa System would be a good addition to the Empire.”

“The Ixtapa System is allied with the rest of the Ten Systems. Invade one, and you’ll have to fight the others as well.” He still hadn’t looked up.

“The Empire’s fought worse odds.”

“The Grand Army, you mean. I remember. Did you want something?”

Traynt unclipped Starkiller’s lightsaber from his belt and put it down on the table between them. “A message,” he said, trying to ignore the lingering headache Starkiller’s attack had left him with. Bloody _bastard_.

Hellsbane’s eyes flickered upwards, and he put the spoon down, pushing the bowl aside. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I suppose you do have my attention after all.” His gaze sharpened suddenly and he snapped out one hand. Traynt reached for the lightsaber, but too late; he only touched empty wood and Hellsbane was turning it over in his hands. “Be glad you weren’t holding it,” he said without looking up. “What is this? Another one of Palpatine’s tricks, to hand me my old apprentice’s lightsaber and expect me to come running, as if I didn’t know that he died that night in the Temple with the rest of the Jedi? What kind of fool do you take me for?”

Traynt blinked at him, startled out of his headache. “Your apprentice? This was taken off an Ixtapan mechanic just this afternoon and he was alive when I left him.”

Hellsbane’s head jerked up. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Aren’t you supposed to know if I’m telling the truth? Some kind of Jedi mindtrick?” Pressing his luck, probably, and with Ben Hellsbane of all people - a Jedi who had evaded the Empire for ten years, and caused as much trouble as any ten other Jedi. He’d been captured three times and the captain who’d captured him that third time and confidently assumed that he’d be the one to keep Hellsbane in custody – he’d next been seen on the floor of his starcruiser with a lightsaber wound through his chest. Hellsbane hadn’t reappeared for another six months when he’d hijacked an Imperial prison transport and vanished with it into the Outer Rim.

Hellsbane stared at him for a long moment, the silence between them like a lit lightsaber on the table. “You are telling the truth,” he said finally, tone grudging. “And I suppose you got those bruises on your face at the same time.”

Traynt put his hands flat on the table in order to avoid touching his much-abused jaw. Starkiller had a _hell_ of a right hook. “Come peacefully and I’ll treat you as befits your rank,” he said, uncomfortably aware that it came out more like a suggestion than an order.

“No guards?” Hellsbane said, cocking his head to one side. “No binders, no Force-inhibitors, a fair trial in front of the Imperial Senate?”

“I’m not authorized to offer that,” Traynt admitted.

“Good. I wouldn’t have believed you if you said you were.” His handsome face was characteristically opaque, blue eyes shuttered. “So really, Lieutenant, what incentive do you offer me to come in?”

“None, I suppose,” Traynt said, watching as Hellsbane stood up to leave, hooking Starkiller’s lightsaber on his belt and tossing a few credits on the table. “But I can tell you that the mechanic we took that lightsaber off of is still alive and in Imperial custody. We’re running his face against the Imperial databanks right now.”

Hellsbane froze with his back to Traynt. “Why should I care?”

“General, everyone in the galaxy knows you’ll come running at the faintest hint of a Jedi in trouble. I hardly think you need more than that trinket on your hip as a good excuse,” Traynt said, more calmly than he felt, leaning back in his seat with his hand on his holstered blaster. “Besides,” he added, watching the muscles in Hellsbane’s back tense, “you said he was your apprentice.”

“I also said he was dead,” Hellsbane said shortly. “Good day, Lieutenant.” He vanished out the door.

Traynt stood up, pulling his jacket up over his blaster, though he really doubted it would garner too much attention in this neighborhood, and nodded to the Mirkannan waitress as she came to clear the table off, humming to herself and clicking her pinchers. He remained standing for a minute, eyes on the windows at the front of the diner, then he followed Hellsbane out the door.

Perrik was standing on the other side of the street, leaning against the shop and raising a cigarette to his lips. He dropped it when he saw Traynt, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot as he crossed the street. “Where is he?”

“He just walked out,” Traynt said, startled. “Don’t you –”

“The last person to walk out was a woman, an Ixtapan,” Perrik said. “Hellsbane hasn’t –” They both turned to stare up the street.

“I will be damned,” Traynt said. “ _Bloody_ Jedi and their damn mindtricks.”

-  
-

Nakin came back to consciousness abruptly – he hadn’t gotten out of the habit of drifting out of sleep until after the war, when he’d barely slept at all – to the breezy, slightly tinny sound of a hologram’s speech.

_“…Hellsbane lost us, damn the Jedi bastard,”_ Lieutenant Perrik was saying bitterly.

Nakin craned his neck around to see who he was speaking to and caught a glimpse of the bridge, just barely visible from the room he’d been left in, cuffed to a chair with arms and legs – not Force-inhibitors, thank the stars, just ordinary durasteel binders. Either the Imperials hadn’t been thinking straight, or they were saving the Force-inhibitors for something else – like the Jedi they were hunting. He couldn’t see the other speaker’s face from here, though: just the back of his head.

He listened with half an ear to Perrik and the junior officer’s conversation as he catalogued his injuries: blaster burn across the back of one hand and up his arm, gash in his forehead where he’d collided foreheads with a helmeted clone trooper ( _smart, Skywalker_ , he chided himself, and shuffled the thought away), numerous bruises and smaller cuts, the lingering aftereffects of the drug being purged out of him by the Force.

_“Did a match turn up for Starkiller in the databanks yet?_ ” Perrik asked, and Nakin’s attention snapped back to the conversation.

“No, not yet,” the junior officer said. “It’s crosschecking against –”

_“Never mind that,”_ Perrik snapped. _“Hellsbane said the lightsaber we picked up off him belonged to a Jedi that died in the Temple on Coruscant. There’s no way it should have gotten out to Ixtapa unless someone took it there.”_

Nakin blinked slowly. Each lightsaber was unique to the Jedi that made it, but that didn’t mean every Jedi could identify another’s with just a casual glance, or even a long inspection. Only someone who knew that Jedi well. Like – a Padawan. Or their master.

“You talked with Hellsbane?” the junior officer questioned.

_“Yes, he and Lieutenant Traynt had a nice chat before he buggered off into the bleeding sunset. Mindtricked us all. Before he left he said something else, though, about the lightsaber belonging to his former apprentice. Check that and get back to me.”_

A console powered up on the bridge. “You’re aware of the belief that ‘Hellsbane’ is an assumed name?”

_“I’m aware of it. Check anyway. See if any of the Jedi that Hellsbane could be had apprentice or former apprentices that were on Coruscant at the time of the Purge.”_

“Yes, sir.”

_“Perrik out.”_

_“Erebus_ out.”

Nakin closed his eyes, breathing in and out in a meditation pattern. He didn’t want to slip too deeply into trance, just enough to pick the locks on his binders using the Force, delicate, careful work that required the utmost in concentration. Ten years ago he couldn’t have done it. He’d had the power, sure, but the control had been beyond him until he’d had the time and the patience – and the surety of a quick trip back to Coruscant hanging over him if he failed – to get it to work.

The binders fell away. He leaned over to put his palms, durasteel and flesh alike, on the binders on his ankles and _shoved_ the Force through them, snatching his hands away as durasteel exploded.

“What’s that?” It was the junior officer on the bridge. Nakin heard booted feet on the floor and leapt straight upward, using the Force to boost him, and let the door slide shut. He heard the footsteps stop outside it, then they faded away as the junior officer went back to the bridge.

Nakin dropped back to the floor. The Imps hadn’t left his gun belt in here – he reached out for the Force for his lightsaber’s energy signature and realized it wasn’t anywhere in the ship – that was right, Perrik had said he’d taken it. What about the other one? The energy stamp wasn’t quite as strong – he hadn’t made it, only saved it from Sidious’s grasping hands and carried it alongside his own for ten years – but it would do, in the absence of his blasters. No energy stamp on those at all, except for the faintness that came from daily wear in his presence. Not enough for him to track them through the ship – well, probably enough, but he didn’t feel like taking the time and the energy right now. So. He had to get to his lightsaber, because he could leave the blasters but there was no way in hell he was leaving Qui-Gon’s lightsaber to be desecrated by Sidious, and then he had to get off-planet as quickly as possible.

Good plan. Better than most. He’d take it.

-  
-

Lieutenant Cafferti was pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as he read the profile the databanks had finally presented him as a match to Nakin Starkiller’s face. Taking his hand away from his face, he reached to flick on the holoprojector again; Perrik was going to be either extremely happy or extremely pissed off and Cafferti wasn’t sure which one it was going to be just yet.

“Don’t,” a low, level voice said, and Cafferti turned to find a boot sole leveled at his throat, Nakin Starkiller attached to the other end of it.

Starkiller’s blue eyes flickered down towards him. “You found my file,” he said mildly. “Read anything interesting?”

“You –” Cafferti began and Starkiller’s heel pushed even harder against his throat. He cut the words off.

“Good answer. The Jedi your superiors are out looking for. Who is he?”

Cafferti took a shallow breath, as deep as he could manage with Starkiller’s boot pressing against his windpipe, and shook his head.

Starkiller cocked his head to the side. “Wrong answer,” he said and moved so quickly Cafferti didn’t see more than a blur; the next thing he knew was blinding pain as bone snapped in his right hand. He couldn’t _scream_ ; something had closed over his mouth like an invisible hand and when he looked up again Starkiller was in the same position, boot up against his throat. “You were saying?”

“Hellsbane,” Cafferti said shakily, a ragged pant in his voice; yes, he’d sworn his loyalty to the Empire, but he didn’t have a death wish. “Ben Hellsbane. He was a general during the Clone Wars –”

“Lie,” Starkiller snapped. “I was there. I know all the Jedi generals. No Hellsbane.”

“It’s an assumed name,” Cafferti whispered, cradling his ruined hand in his left one. “We think. Only the Emperor and Darth Cidal know who he is – might be. We know he’s a Jedi –”

“Obviously,” Starkiller interjected, not moving. How the hell could the man hold his balance that long without even wavering?

“– he was a Master. We think. We got a tip that he might be here; Lieutenant Traynt made contact with him today.”

“I heard,” Starkiller said, voice surprisingly serene. “You lot are all idiots. Can’t even keep track of one Jedi – here’s a word of advice, Lieutenant: next time you capture someone wearing a lightsaber, it’s generally wise to assume they’re Jedi.” His foot swung around suddenly and met the curve of Cafferti’s skull with a surprisingly loud _crack_.

-  
-

“Something wrong with your bag of bolts?”

“I just want to get it checked over before I head out again,” Hellsbane said, voice light and musical despite the damage that had been done to it sometime in the past. “There was a problem with the hyperdrive a few months back; I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Who’s best?”

Kandir ran his good hand over his close-cropped head. Like most of his generation, he was a veteran of the Ten Systems War; the withered remains of his left hand were proof enough of that. “For a hyperdrive? Starkiller. Nakin Starkiller. He’s expensive, but he’s the best when it comes to anything mechanical, and there’s no one in the Ten Systems better at dealing with faulty hyperdrives. You’ll find him at Zsuzsi Dj’onz’s joint, The Sand and Stone, up on Priester’s Way.”

“Nakin Starkiller,” Hellsbane noted. “And The Sand and Stone. My thanks.”

Kandir eyed him carefully. Hellsbane had been less trouble than most renters he’d had, quiet as a ripza and sleeping in his starship most nights, but he’d never shown any interest in anything going on in Per Macchu. He rather thought this was the first time Hellsbane had said more than two words to him since renting out his hangar. “Get there early if you can,” he added finally. “Starkiller’s fighting tonight, and you won’t want to miss that.”

“Fighting?” Hellsbane repeated, with an elegant raise of one fiery eyebrow. “For money, you mean.”

“Zsuzsi cuts him a share of the credits her place brings in on a fight night, so yeah. As long as you’re in the city, though, it’s not to be missed.” Kandir let out a low Ixtapan whistle of titillating appreciation. “The boy can take down anything, bipedal or not. You might try him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Hellsbane pushed overlong strands of gray-streaked red hair out of his face. “Maybe I will. Priester’s Way, you said?”

-  
-

Nakin came into The Sand and Stone using the back entrance, appearing abruptly next to Zsuzsi behind the bar. She gave him a long look, taking in the blaster burn across the sleeve of his shirt, the dried blood on his neck and caking above his left eye, his skinned knuckles and bruised face.

“You look like hell, Starkiller,” she noted, reaching back for a bottle of chacharan brandy and pouring him half a glass. Nakin regarded it with the customary dismay he extended toward all types of liquor. “I take it the Imperial job ended badly.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Nakin said, making a face at the taste of the alcohol.

“Recognized your face from your broadsheets, did they?”

“They also didn’t pay me,” he added, pouring chacharan over his split lip.

Zsuzsi snatched the empty glass from his hand. “I don’t know why I waste the good stuff on you. You don’t appreciate it anyway.”

“I appreciate it,” Nakin said indignantly. “I just don’t like it.” He ran his fingers over the cut on his forehead. “Do I really look that bad?”

“Yes,” Zsuzsi said flatly. “You want me to find a pair of meertzus? Turnout’ll be less, but if you’re not up for a fight –”

“I can fight,” Nakin said, a little indignantly. He put a hand on the bar and vaulted it easily, barely missing a gifga’s curling horns. The gifga – not one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, but she recognized him from previous fight nights – turned, opening his mouth to berate or threaten, but he fell silent when he saw Nakin’s face.

Zsuzsi snorted. “You’re famous,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” said Nakin, looking a little hurt. He started scraping dried blood off his forehead, flinching as flecks of it came flaking off onto his fingers. “Great. Who’m I up against?”

-  
-

Nakin took out the first three comers in less than ten minutes put together, barely moving except to abruptly lash out. There was careful control in each movement, contained rage that Zsuzsi recognized from the war. This was more of it in one place than she’d seen in years, though; usually Nakin took the time to play with his opponents, give the audience a show, have Zsuzsi sell enough drinks to make a tidy profit. Right now he just wanted to kill something and was barely holding it off.

At least he _was_ holding it off. Ten years ago he hadn’t been able.

“Is that _it_?” he spat, staring out at a crowd that was suddenly silent as the last opponent was dragged out of the ring. “What are you all, cowards? This is _pathetic_.”

“What about me?” That was a man’s voice, a stranger’s, a clipped Core accent with a slight roughness around the edges that came from old damage. Zsuzsi, perched behind the bar, scanned the crowd for the speaker – that took fucking guts, right after three prospective fighters had had to be carried out.

She didn’t see him until he’d pushed his way into the fight ring cleared for Nakin. A small man, lean, with gray-streaked red hair tied back from his wasted but still handsome face. Nakin’s eyes widened minutely when he saw him, and Zsuzsi saw his lips part to speak. He stopped when the stranger shook his head slightly in negation.

What the hell? Nakin didn’t know anyone off planet besides other smugglers and most of them had come through The Sand and Stone at some point. This man was a complete stranger – more, Nakin wasn’t acknowledging him besides that first flash of surprise.

Some of the anger had gone from his voice when he said, “You got a name, off-worlder?”

“Ben Hellsbane.” There was a note of warning in his clipped syllables. “And if I’m an off-worlder, then you are too. Where?” He slipped his jacket off over his shoulders, dropped it at the edge of the ring along with his gun belt.

Nakin smiled slightly. “Good call. It’s Tatooine – but I haven’t been back in years.”

“Hypnos,” Hellsbane said. “But I was only there the once.”

“Tiny little swamp of a moon in the Core. Fail to see why I should care.” Nakin tossed his head back with a snort of disdain. “Enough preliminaries, O – old man. Let’s fight.” He raised his hands in front of him, fingers curved inward and flared out.

Hellsbane smiled slightly, but didn’t say anything. His own hands were open and loose at his sides. This time it was Nakin who couldn’t stop moving, contrary to everything else Zsuzsi had ever known about him, shifting from foot to foot and circling Hellsbane.

Both of them moved at once, moved as one, mirror images of each other, and then fists and feet lashed out, blurring together. Nakin and Hellsbane were a blur, matching each other blow for blow. Abruptly Naking leapt straight up, twisting in midair to snap out a kick to Hellsbane’s head. Hellsbane ducked it and rolled into a somersault; he and Nakin came up opposite of where they had been and started circling each other before diving in again.

Zsuzsi couldn’t take her eyes off them. They moved like two halves of a whole, flawlessly and seamlessly countering each other’s moves; money changed hands in the crowd behind them, whispers stirring like sarradan winds in the savannah. Where did Nakin know Hellsbane from?

There was a slight pause in the action as both Nakin and Hellsbane bounced back to the edge, time enough for Nakin to wipe a smear of blood off the reopened cut on his forehead. “Not bad.”

“Are you holding back?” Hellsbane asked.

“Little bit.”

“Well, don’t!” Hellsbane said sharply, and they were at each other again, rolling over backwards, grappling at each other with hands and arms; Hellsbane pinned Nakin to the floor and Nakin flipped them both, leaning down over Hellsbane. “Give up?”

“Not yet,” the older man said, and threw Nakin backwards over his head. The crowd scattered as Nakin arched up and twisted coming down, landing in a half-crouch one hand flaring out in front of him.

“Not bad.” There were a pair of long-bladed durasteel knives suddenly in his hands. “Now let’s dance.”

Hellsbane rose with a dagger in his right fist. “Nice warm-up, Starkiller. Let’s.”

There was no expected beat of silence. He and Nakin were both abruptly chest to chest with the barest possible minimum of motion needed to get them there in between, knives pressed blade to blade, and then they broke apart, circling once before diving in again. Durasteel clashed and both men snapped out bare hands and feet, elbows and knees, throwing each other up and away often enough that the crowd scattered back permanently, fluctuating like a living thing.

Without looking away once Zsuzsi reached for the bottle of chacharan and poured herself a glass, knocking it back. Nakin was damn well alive and enjoying it. She’d be damned if she’d seen him this happy in years.

There was no warning at all when Hellsbane’s knife came to rest on the side of Nakin’s neck. “You’re dead,” the stranger noted.

“So are you,” Nakin said, and Hellsbane’s eyes flickered downward to see the kknives pressed crosswise over his stomach.

A draw.

They drew back from each other and bowed at the waist, formally, then strolled back to the edges of the ring where they’d left their things. The crowd seemed a little shocked. No one had fought Nakin Starkiller to a draw in the history of fight nighting – years – and this was…unthinkable. Worse, Nakin didn’t even look surprised. Who the hell was Ben Hellsbane?

-  
-

Nakin finished buckling his gun belt on in time to look up and meet Obi-Wan’s – Hellsbane’s, better if he didn’t forget himself – eyes across the circle, eyebrows raise a little in question.

“Buy you a drink?” he called, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.

“I won’t say no to that.” Hellsbane folded his coat over his arm; his voice was rough and a little harsh and surprisingly dapper. Nakin thought of innumerable planets and the way light fell in the practice rings of the Temple, and then he thought of death in the halls. _You bastard, I thought you were_ dead.

Zsuzsi was looking at them oddly when they pushed through the crowd to the bar. “I’ll take that drink now,” he said, smiling and tasting blood on his mouth where he’d cut open the inside of his lip on a tooth.

“Good liquor is wasted on you,” she snorted, picking up the bottle of chacharan. “I’ll put it on your tab. Same for you?” Her eyes were startlingly bright when she looked at Hellsbane.

“Not if he’s having something bloody awful,” Hellsbane said, slow smile spreading over his still handsome face. The years hadn’t hurt him badly at all, Nakin thought, so long as you didn’t look too closely at the oversized knot of scar tissue that seemed to encompass his maimed left hand.

“He’ll take the good stuff,” Nakin said easily, feeling Hellsbane’s eyes on him. They were both studying each other, mapping out the changes ten years and a second war – or a continuation of the first one, the war they’d been fighting since Qui-Gon Jinn died on Naboo all those years ago – had wrought.

Zsuzsi poured them both tall glasses of chacharan, topping Nakin’s off with water and Hellsbane’s with kirioo, a sharp-tasting cordial made from kiri roots from the Radja Jungle. Nakin didn’t like the stuff much himself, but it was a traditional savannah addition to chacharan. “Nice show,” she said to Hellsbane as she handed him his drink. “How do you two know each other?”

Well, Zsuzsi wasn’t _stupid_ , and he and Hellsbane had put on a bit of a show. “From the Clone Wars,” Nakin said, smiling thinly. There had been a lot of people involved in the Clone Wars, and not all of them were clones or Jedi.

“We were wing mates,” Hellsbane added, smiling disarmingly. There was sudden gathering of the Force in the air around him and Nakin thought, _oh hell no, he’s not going to mindtrick Zsuzsi._ He put his hand on Hellsbane’s arm.

“Come upstairs with me.” Off Zsuzsi’s startled expression, he added, “We can catch up.”

Hellsbane was frowning at him, eyes narrowed, but the corners of his mouth turned up a little at Nakin’s words. “Of course,” he said smoothly.

Nobody watched them go upstairs. The cantina was still buzzing with people, most of them eagerly discussing the fight and too occupied to notice Hellsbane and Nakin ascending the stairs.

“My room’s at the end,” he said over his shoulder to Hellsbane, pressing his palm to the recognition screen. He’d fixed that up himself, still paranoid in the early years of the Purge, just beginning to believe he might actually have something resembling a base.

Hellsbane’s gaze was steady and calm as the door slid shut behind them – _too_ steady and calm. Nakin put his still-full glass of chacharan down on top of his weapons chest and reached for Hellsbane’s. He let him take it, fingers opening loosely when Nakin’s closed around the glass. Nakin turned back to him, well aware that a bare three feet lay between him and the man he’d once called master.

They both stared at each other.

“The room’s safe,” Nakin said finally, desperately. “No one gets in here except me, not even Zsuzsi. It –”

“Anakin,” Hellsbane – _Obi-Wan_ – said softly.

And Anakin Skywalker broke.

-  
-

Obi-Wan caught Anakin as his former apprentice flung himself at him, hands coming up to slid over the small of his back and cradle him, balance him out. Anakin let out a shaky breath, turning his face into the curve between neck and shoulder, breathing hard and clutching at Obi-Wan as if he expected him to melt away into smoke beneath his hands, broken gasping sounds in the small of his throat.

“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, “Shh, Anakin, I’m here. I’m –”

“You were dead,” Anakin said, the words muffled against his skin. “You were very, very dead.” He thumped the heel of his hand against Obi-Wan’s chest, but without much force. “I _felt_ you die, you –” He cut off abruptly. “I felt you die.”

“Anakin –”

“No.” Anakin jerked back, away from him, and wrapped his arms around himself. His face was utterly cold and closed off. He didn’t look anything like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan had known “No, you don’t have the right.” He shook his head. “Ten years, Obi-Wan. Ten fucking years, and I thought you were dead through all of them.” A deep, shaky breath as his eyelashes dipped downward, then snapped up again. “You have no right to waltz in here, into my life after all these years. No right at all.”

It was like a slap in the face. Obi-Wan reeled back, hurt to the bone and feeling oddly empty. “You were my _brother_ ,” he snapped. “Do you think that means nothing, Anakin? I spent three years looking for you after Utapau, after everyone I knew told me you’d died on Coruscant. I never gave up, even – I never gave up.”

“You didn’t look hard enough,” Anakin said quietly. “You should have.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I should have.”

“I heard what Perrik was saying about you – about your alter-ego Hellsbane,” Anakin continued, blue eyes flashing. “Were you too busy trying to save the galaxy to bother with yourself?”

“Anakin, this isn’t about me.”

Anakin shook his head again. “Isn’t it?” Another step backwards, his face falling half in shadow. “You didn’t come to Ixtapa for me.”

“Anakin, I –”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Anakin, _don’t_.” Obi-Wan said sharply, and stepped forward to grab Anakin’s arm and pull him closer.

He didn’t get that far, mostly because Anakin drew back his arm and punched him in the face, then twisted to one side and grabbed for Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan snapped his elbow into Anakin’s face and his knee up into Anakin’s groin; Anakin took both blows, the first to his nose and the second on the outside of his thigh, face absolutely blank against the pain, and kicked Obi-Wan in the kneecap. Obi-Wan curled his hands around Anakin’s biceps as he folded backwards with the kick, bringing the younger Jedi with him; Anakin turned the momentum in a backwards roll as the Force peeled Obi-Wan’s fingers apart, separating them. Both of them jerked apart, in balanced fighters’ crouches now, Anakin leaning forward slightly with his eyes wide and blood running down his face from his broken nose.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarled as he straightened, turning away and raising his hand to his face.

“Anakin –” Obi-Wan began as he stood, touching his jaw tentatively. One thing was sure, and that was that Anakin’s hand to hand had definitely improved since they’d last sparred, sometime back on the Outer Rim between battles.

He saw Anakin’s shoulders tense, and then his former Padawan raised his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said, perfect conciliating composure in his voice, as if he were a Padawan again, although he’d never used that particular tone. “That was uncalled for.”

Ten years ago that would have been welcome. Now it seemed like a cheat, like a resurrected ghost of something that had never really been. Obi-Wan shuttered his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Anakin was still turned away, the line of his skull limned in light and revealing the faint lines of scar tissue beneath his short blond hair, bleached golden by Ixtapa’s twin suns. “No,” he said finally. “No, I suppose I deserved that. I’m sorry I never found you.”

“It’s – a very large galaxy,” Anakin said with some difficulty, turning back to him. “I – I felt you die, when Order 66 went through. I was meditating, in the Council chamber, and I – snapped. I didn’t think I was wrong, not that time.”

Obi-Wan ducked his head, hair falling over his shoulder. He should cut it again, maybe. “You weren’t,” he admitted. “After a fashion.”

Anakin’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You were dead,” he said flatly.

“Very, very dead,” Obi-Wan agreed, repeating Anakin’s words back at him.

“But you’re not dead now.” Anakin held his left hand out an inch or so from his broken nose, not even wincing as the cartilage repaired itself. “Ow,” he said, more an expected statement than an expression of pain, and moved his hand upward, healing the cuts on his face with a minimum of power. Funny; he’d never been particularly good at healing before. It had taken too much care and concentration for him to bother, not when he could finagle Obi-Wan into doing it or just slap a bacta bandage on. “Let me guess: _there is no death, there is the Force?”_

“Something like that,” Obi-Wan admitted, decidedly fascinated with the progression of healing on Anakin’s body. “What did you do to your face?”

“Ran into a clone in full armor,” Anakin said easily, frowning at the blaster burn on his flesh hand and arm. “Or did you mean before? It was an unfortunate incident involving a twenty-story window, a bounty hunter, and a percussion grenade. Well, that and a few bar fights. The arm’s from getting shot.” He looked briefly pensive. “I haven’t actually been shot all that much. Tossed out windows, punched in the face, knifed, arrested – not a lot of shooting. It’s kind of a new experience.”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, startled for some reason he couldn’t quite define. “I’m –”

“Apologize to me again and I’m going to punch you again,” Anakin said flatly, smile fading. He met Obi-Wan’s gray eyes with his own blue ones, gaze steady and a little cold. He didn’t look like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan remembered.

“You’ve changed,” Obi-Wan said, blinking. He hadn’t expected – well, he hadn’t expected to find Anakin here, of all places, but he hadn’t expected Anakin to have – “You’ve grown up.”

There was a surprising amount of bewilderment in Anakin’s eyes in reaction to that. He ducked his head, almost looking nineteen again for a heartbeat. “You know I’ve wanted to hear you say that for thirteen years?” he said softly. “Ever since Padmé – she told me that. Before Geonosis.”

Obi-Wan sighed. It was a small sound, and it stirred the hot, humid air in the room. “I’m telling you now.”

For a moment Anakin was silent, face distant, and then he smiled, the expression breaking over him like a Coruscant sunrise. “That’ll do.”

-  
-

Anakin didn’t stir when Obi-Wan slipped out of his arms and onto the floor, pulling on his clothes. They’d talked most of the night, Zsuzsi’s chacharan loosening both their tongues, and fallen asleep at some point in the early morning. Half drunk, exhausted, and deep in sleep, Anakin had finally lost what inhibitions he’d still had up and wrapped his arms around Obi-Wan, clinging like a Mon Calamari gihra, turning his face into the curve of Obi-Wan’s neck and muttering slightly in a mixture of Huttese and Basic. Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed him away.

Anakin’s lightsaber was still hanging on his belt. Obi-Wan unclipped it and weighed it in his hand thoughtfully, looking at Anakin’s bright head, still and scarred in sleep. He hadn’t asked for it, the first thing almost any Jedi would have done upon losing his lightsaber, and even with Anakin’s penchant for such – this was the same lightsaber he’d had ten years ago; Obi-Wan rather thought that was some kind of record for Anakin. Still, he hadn’t asked for it, or even commented on it. And he had been wearing a gun belt with well-used blasters holstered there; Obi-Wan touched briefly on the energy stamp on them with his mind.

There was another lightsaber as well. Obi-Wan put Anakin’s lightsaber down on the bedside table and stooped down next to the foot of the bed, where Anakin had hung his gun belt off the post. Lightly, he reached out with mind and hands, touching the lightsaber and suddenly wanted to both laugh and cry. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. Anakin had been carrying Qui-Gon’s lightsaber with him for ten years. Obi-Wan kept his hands on it, reassured by the lingering touch of his old Master’s mind, and then reluctantly let go.

He could smell ozone in the air as he made his way downstairs. The promised storm had finally come to Per Macchu, dark clouds hanging low and heavy over the city and wind whipping against the side of the building.

The cantina was nowhere near last night’s capacity. A few tables were taken and a few patrons sat at the counter, speaking in the soft gurgling lilt of the continental Ixtapan tongue. Obi-Wan wondered briefly if Anakin had bothered to learn it or if he’d stuck to Basic like he had as a Padawan. The realization that he wasn’t sure which one it was disturbed him more than he cared to admit.

Zsuzsi eyed him warily as he approached. “Nakin kick you out of bed, Hellsbane?” she demanded.

“I’m an early riser. He’s not,” Obi-Wan said, leaning on the counter and letting his gaze travel leisurely over the cantina, looking for anyone out of place, anyone that tugged at the Force he carried around him like the Jedi robes he no longer wore. “Cariik’aa, if you’ve got it.”

“I do,” Zsuzsi said, reaching for the container and flicking on the plasmaheater behind her. “How do you know Nakin?” she asked again, with the same suspicious expression she’d worn last night.

“I told you,” Obi-Wan said, “we met during the Clone Wars.”

“No. Nakin told me that. I want your side of the story.”

“There’s nothing else to tell,” Obi-Wan said calmly.

Zsuzsi leaned forward toward him, thick dark braid falling over her shoulder. “No one ever says that unless there’s a lot more to tell. And I’ll tell you what I think it is: I think you’re dangerous to him,” she said in a low, steady voice. “And I want a reason for Spaceforce to haul your ass off my planet.”

“I would never hurt him,” Obi-Wan told her flatly. “Never. And I’m no more dangerous to him than he is to me.” A lie. The Imperials wouldn’t have come to Ixtapa if it hadn’t been for him, but he’d spent the last ten years lying, and it was a hard habit to break. “I’m glad he has friends here.”

She said, “How do you know Nakin?” She hesitated briefly, then went on. “You’re too like each other to just be friends.”

“I trained him,” Obi-Wan said, and turned his head as the door opened. The flash of white clone armor was the first thing he saw.

-  
-

Zsuzsi turned back to the plasmaheater to get the cariik off before it congealed. “I still think you’re not telling me something,” she said, meaning to get the truth out of Ben Hellsbane one way or another. Nakin was off-limits, but a stranger –

He wasn’t there.

Zsuzsi was blinking at thin air, bemused and more than a little startled, when the clones at the door finally got her attention. She reached for the plasma rifle beneath the counter – Imperials were _not_ welcome here, or anywhere else on Ixtapa for that matter –

“Put both your hands where I can see them,” a woman’s cool voice said.

“Who the hell are you?” Zsuzsi demanded, not complying. The stranger was maybe a head smaller than her, with olive skin and a spray of black teardrop tattoos across her nose and cheeks. She wore power like a nearly invisible cloak, the same way Nakin and Hellsbane both did.

“I’m with the Empire,” the girl – young, in her early twenties, Ixtapan years at least – said. “You don’t need anything beyond that.”

“I damn well do,” Zsuzsi snapped. “Your kind aren’t –”

The girl raised a hand and Zsuzsi went flying back into the plasmaheater behind her. She rolled off as soon as she could, the coils burning patterns in her ass, and grabbed the edge of the counter to pull herself upright. She knew who the girl was – one of the Emperor’s Hands, the one they called the Emperor’s Dog. She shouldn’t have come to Ixtapa.

The Imperial tossed a palm-sized holoprojector down onto the floor, where it unfolded a life-size holo of a tall young man – soft-faced, handsome, long-haired, with a scar down one side of his face. “Anakin Skywalker,” she said coldly. “A Jedi Knight. _Where is he_?”

“Lady, this is Ixtapa,” one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, a wrangler down at the Hahaari Market, snapped. “Jedi aren’t _welcome_ here. And neither are Imperials,” he added significantly. “So why don’t you –”

The girl snapped a hand out toward him, fingers closing into a fist, and Zsuzsi’s eyes widened as the wrangler’s hands went up to his throat, clawing at the flesh there as though he meant to claw straight through to his windpipe. The girl turned away from him, ignoring him as he fell to the floor, blood spattering over his fingers.

“I know he’s here, so don’t even think about lying to me. Where is he?”

“There’s no one named Anakin Skywalker on Merapesh,” Zsuzsi snapped, eyes on the holo. “If he’s on Ixtapa, you’re on the wrong continent.”

“Maybe this picture’s too old,” the girl said, waving a hand toward the projector. The holo changed, growing an inch or two and several years older, curls shortening to a short clip along the curve of the skull, robes molding to trousers and a loose laced shirt, scars added to the smooth skin of the face. “Recognize him now?”

“Hey, that’s –” someone said, and was quickly silenced by his companion.

“Maybe he didn’t tell you his real name,” the Imperial went on. “He always was lying to us back during the Clone Wars. Maybe you know him better as Nakin Starkiller.”

“Oh, don’t be _ridiculous_ ,” Tcella burst out from his seat at the bar. “Nakin’s good people. He’s no Jedi.”

The girl cocked her head to one side. “So tell me where he is, you miserable little sand flea.”

Tcella’s mouth dropped open in perfect indignation and he clicked his pinchers together with a hard clattering sound that echoed across the bar. “Nakin’s good people,” he repeated angrily. “One of _us_.”

“And I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment when he’s examining your dismembered corpse. I’ll ask one more time before I start removing limbs: _where is Anakin Skywalker_?”

“I’m right here,” Nakin Starkiller said, and everyone looked up to see him standing at the top of the stairs, blasters in his hands. “You want me, Yulalli? Come and get me.”

The shining metal cylinder at the girl’s – Yulalli’s – waist sprang into her hand, a long line of crimson red sprouting from it. “No lightsaber, Skywalker?”

“A Jedi’s weapon,” Nakin said, not moving. “And there are no Jedi anymore. Your treacherous master made sure of that. No, Sha’re Yulalli, I’m not Jedi. And I think you’ve said it yourself: I never was.”

“But I am.” Ben Hellsbane stepped out of thin air and put his unlit lightsaber against the back of Yulalli’s neck. “So you can see where we might have a difference of opinion.”

Yulalli’s lips drew back from her teeth in a savage snarl. “Master Kenobi,” she said, then looked furious at herself for using the honorific. “I should have expected to find you here. You and Skywalker always were joined at the hip. Probably because no one else would have him.”

Hellsbane leaned forward, lips brushing along the fine hair bound at the back of her skull. “Master Skrik would have been so disappointed,” he said softly.

“Don’t _talk_ about him,” Yulalli snarled and leapt straight upward, turning in midair. Hellsbane met her, lightsaber suddenly in hand and arcing over his head, and the air crackled when they met.

For a moment time seemed to pause and still, everyone’s attention on the duel of titans. Even Zsuzsi was enthralled; she – and probably everyone else on Ixtapa – had never seen a lightsaber duel before. Nakin was the first to move; he raised both blasters and shot two clone troopers cleanly through the neck, one and then the other. That broke the spell; most of Zsuzsi’s patrons shrieked and dove for cover, at least one of them going through Zsuzsi’s expensive glass windows in the process, while others went for their own blasters. This was the Outer Rim, after all; the Empire got no respect here. Zsuzsi snatched the plasma rifle out from beneath the bar, raising it to her shoulder, and aiming carefully. Nakin took out the clone she’d been aiming at with a flying kick to the jaw and a shot to the head before she could fire.

“Look at yourself, Sha’re,” Hellsbane cried over the clash of lightsabers. “You were a Jedi, a promising Padawan –”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Yulalli yelled. “You’re a dead man, Kenobi, you and your precious Chosen One Padawan.”

“Anakin was knighted years ago,” Hellsbane said calmly as a thunderclap sounded outside the window. The storm had finally come to Per Macchu. “What would Master Skrik have said about what you’ve become?”

“I told you not to talk about him!” One of Nakin’s shots had gone awry and shot out the lights in the cantina; the lightsabers beat red and blue shadows on Yulalli’s face.

“He was a good Jedi,” Hellsbane continued. “A good man. I liked him. If he was here today –”

“He’s _not_ ,” Yulalli snarled, stabbing upward; Hellsbane blocked it and forced her lightsaber down and around, back behind her. She kicked him in the jaw and he took half a staggering step backwards before regaining his balance. “So don’t talk about him, Kenobi, don’t you fucking dare –”

“And you’re working for the man who killed him?” Hellsbane said softly, the words half-drowned in the sound of lightsabers clashing.

“He was murdered by a _clone_.”

“The order came from the Chancellor, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, still calm. “I know. I was one of the victims.”

“Don’t talk to me about Order 66!” Yulalli screamed, and her lightsaber dashed down toward Hellsbane.

Hellsbane’s hand snapped out toward her. Zsuzsi saw the girl’s teeth grit as if in pain, arm – and lightsaber – slowly forced backwards. “You bastard,” she whispered, breathing hard. “You sick _bastard_.”

“You’re the murderer, Sha’re,” Nakin said.

Zsuzsi looked up. There were no clone troopers left standing and Nakin was crouched on top of a table a few feet away, blasters held lightly in his hands. He was watching Hellsbane and Yulalli with startlingly bright eyes, brows narrowed in judgment.

“You can still come back, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, without looking up at Nakin. “It’s not too late.”

“Yes,” Nakin said. “It is.”

Hellsbane’s head snapped up. “Anakin, don’t!”

Anakin shot Yulalli through the back of the head. She slumped forward, lightsaber falling from her hand and deactivating before it hit the floor, and Hellsbane leapt to catch her body, lowering her to the floor. When he straightened again he was still holding his lightsaber, although it was deactivated now.

“Anakin…”

“Say it,” Nakin invited, nostrils flaring. “Say it, Obi-Wan. Tell me off like I’m a Padawan.”

“I don’t think we should have this conversation here, Anakin.”

“I don’t think we should have this conversation,” Nakin snapped back. He leapt down off the table and stepped over toward Hellsbane. “We’re over, Obi-Wan. I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.”

“Anakin!”

Nakin unclipped one of the lightsabers on his belt and slammed it into Hellsbane’s chest. “I was there, Master,” he said. “I saw them die. I was on Coruscant when Palpatine sent clones through the city dragging out children and slaughtering them in the streets like animals. There is no forgiveness. No Jedi-killer deserves that – especially not a traitor.”

“Anakin –”

“The name’s Starkiller,” Nakin said, very softly. “Nakin Starkiller. Anakin Skywalker died ten years ago on Coruscant.” He took his hand away, and Hellsbane caught the lightsaber before it could fall. “You’d better get off-planet before the Empire sends someone else to investigate the Dog’s disappearance,” he said in a normal tone. “We’ll take care of the Imps.”

“Anakin –”

“Goodbye, Obi-Wan,” Nakin said, and turned away, going to Zsuzsi’s patrons.

“Don’t even think about it,” Zsuzsi said when Hellsbane took a step forward, raising the plasma rifle slightly. “We take care of our own here.”

There was a pained look on the man’s face. “I can see that,” he said, and then he turned around and walked out of the cantina. “I’m sorry for the trouble,” he added before the door closed behind him.

_end_


	2. Unfinished: A Long Time Gone (version 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point in time it's highly unlikely that I'll ever actually finish the sequel I started writing to "What is Lost", due to the fact that it's not a story I'm really interested in writing anymore. Initially it was meant to be the first story in a trilogy that would also have introduced Luke and Leia, who in this 'verse were raised on Tatooine and Naboo, respectively, and included some other familiar faces from the OT. If I remember correctly (my original notes are from 2007!), the A-plot for the second story was the young Leia Naberrie being taken by Palpatine for training as one of his Dark Jedi and Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padme going on a rescue mission.
> 
> I've got two alternate beginnings for that story; hopefully they're of interest. This is version one (originally written in 2007).

_He couldn’t move.  Couldn’t think.  Couldn’t even breathe._

_Pain poured over him in waves, death –_ darkness _– inundating the Force.  He wasn’t Anakin Skywalker anymore, he was the Force, and the Force was suddenly roiling with the deaths of hundreds –_ thousands _– of Jedi.  Anakin Skywalker would have screamed for his master, breathless and blindly terrified, but the Force had no one to scream for.  He couldn’t even identify Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Force-signature among the hundreds striking him all at once.  And then –_

_Cold.  Washing over him.  Clean, cold water.  He was – surrounded.  Hot blood cascaded around him, burning his flesh.  He fought for air, reaching for his rebreather, and then laser bolts cut through the water, striking the rebreather from his hand, his torso, his arm, burning the hair from his head.  Automatically he went for his lightsaber, but it had fallen from his hand when he fell.  He tried to call for the Force but couldn’t; the death of his friends – his_ family _– rocked him back, water filling his lungs.  And as laser bolts boiled the water around him, he fell._

_Endlessly._

_“Anakin!” Someone grabbed his shoulder.  Anakin gasped, water – fire – poison gas – tearing at his throat.  He couldn’t even scream._

_“_ Anakin _.  Ground and center, child, control yourself, don’t let it control you.  You_ must _control yourself, young Skywalker.”_

_A woman’s voice.  A master’s.  Who –_

_“Master Nu,” Anakin whispered.  His voice came out in a thin croak.  He opened his eyes slowly, all the strength drained from his body, to find Jocasta Nu kneeling in front of him where he’d collapsed on the floor.  “You’re alive.”  He thought – “There are still – Jedi.  We’re still –”_

_“They’re coming for us,” the master said, drawing him to his feet with her hands on his arms.  “Clone troopers from the Senate.”  For the first time in thirteen years at the Temple, he saw a lightsaber clipped to her belt._

_“Clone troopers,” Anakin repeated.  His voice was flat; he couldn’t find the energy to add emotion.  “Master Windu went to arrest the Chancellor.”_

_“To arrest the Chancellor?” Nu repeated blankly.  “What for?”_

_“Palpatine is Sidious,” Anakin said tiredly.  “He fooled us all – he fooled_ me _.  He wanted –”_

_“You,” Nu said.  “He wanted you.  The Chosen One.”  She looked out the window, down at the cityscape below.  Anakin trailed after her and saw an army._

_The Grand Army of the Republic._

_Coming for the Jedi._

_“Suns’_ end _,” Anakin swore, pain still spiking at the back of his head.  Jedi were still dying.  In the Outer Rim, the Mid Rim, even the Core Planets.  Even – on Coruscant._

_Mace Windu._

_"He’s dead,” Anakin said blankly._

_Nu turned toward him.  “Who’s dead?”_

_"Master Windu,” Anakin said, raising a hand to his head.  “Palpatine –_ Sidious _– he_ killed _him.”_

_“And now he’s coming for us,” Nu said.  She turned toward the door, opening it with a flick of her wrist.  “We have to get the younglings out of the Temple now.”  She looked back at the last minute, eyes on Anakin.  “Skywalker?”_

He knows about Padmé.  He wanted me – he wanted to use her to get to me.  He –

_“He killed Obi-Wan,” Anakin said blankly; it was the only thing he_ could _say._

_“Yes,” Nu said calmly, and laid a hand on his arm.  “But you’re still alive.”_

 *

“You know,” Zsuzsi said, “half the time the winner isn’t who crosses the finish line first, it’s whoever’s left alive.”  She glared at Nakin pointedly.

He shrugged, unrepentant, most of his attention on his third dial check.  “I _have_ raced before,” he pointed out.  “Just not recently.”  He flipped the energy consumption switches again – little low, but not unexpected.  He hadn’t warmed up the pod yet; it ought to be fine by the time the race started.  Ought to be.

“ _How_ recently?” Zsuzsi asked, not for the first time.  Nakin hadn’t bothered to answer her before, but this time he took a minute to hold his hands up in front of her and start ticking off fingers.

“Twenty four years,” he told her brightly, closing his fists except for four fingers on his left hand.  “But I won then.”

Zsuzsi frowned for a moment, obviously doing the math in her head, and then made a really distressed sound.  “You were _nine_?”

“I was a precocious child,” Nakin assured her as the track manager called the track clear, repeating the command in Huttese and continental Ixtapan.  He glanced down at the consoles again, tracking the energy consumption, double-checking that everything that needed to be connected was connected.  “Don’t worry,” he added when Zsuzsi didn’t leave immediately.  The track manager was whistling the call again, obviously impatient.  “I got this under control.”

“Good luck,” Zsuzsi said, sounding dubious, and Nakin grinned at her, tasting the dust picked up by the pods on the track.

“You laid some money on me, right?  You’d better clear out before they haul you out of here.”  He cocked his head to the side, where the track manager and a couple of gifga enforcers were approaching, scowling.  “You don’t want to make a scene in front of the King and all.”

“Good luck,” Zsuzsi said again before she turned and walked away, weaving her way between the pods lined up on the track until she got to the edge, where she started to climb into the bleachers.

The commentator was announcing the competitors.  Nakin raised his head and waved when his name was called, but otherwise he wasn’t listening to any of the other competitors.  Wasn’t likely to matter who he was racing anyway; this was the first year Ixtapa had hosted its annual podrace since before the Ten Systems War, and Nakin hadn’t considered podracing again until Zsuzsi had mentioned it back when the announcement was made.  It seemed unlikely that Nakin would know any of his opponents.

“– Sebulba,” the commentator said, and Nakin looked up sharply, hands clenching on the controls. 

“This can’t be happening,” he said in Huttese.  _“This can’t be happening.”_

But it was Sebulba, the little Dug older and meaner but otherwise unchanged.  He’d forgotten that Dugs had three times the lifetime of humans; Sebulba was still in his prime.  For a moment Nakin was nine again, racing a pod he’d built with his own two hands with parts scavenged from Watto’s shop.  Qui-Gon had been using him.  Nakin hadn’t realized it then, had been furious when he’d figured it out as a sixteen-year-old Padawan, but now he thought of it with the dull knowledge that he might do the same thing in similar circumstances.

Being a Jedi broke them all, sooner or later, little by little, one way or another.  Anything for the Republic.

No Republic, not anymore.  Nakin took his hands off the controls and sat back, climbing out of his pod when the manager came over to look for concealed weapons.  There’d been three murders at Black River on Berdu a month ago; the Dovasar Star organizers weren’t taking any chances.  It meant that Nakin didn’t have his blasters on him, but he did have his lightsaber, trusting that it would be anonymous among the mess of miscellaneous tools in his pod.

It was.  The manager nodded and passed on disinterestedly and Nakin climbed back into his pod.  There was a surge of excitement and adrenaline in his veins, the old thrill of the race back in his chest, and he leaned forward with his hands on the controls, waiting.

“Bring it,” he murmured in Huttese, the words guttural and familiar on his tongue.  “Just bring it, you son of a bitch.”

Bolts of energy crackled as they shot between connectors all across the track.  Nakin slipped his goggles down over his eyes, fixing them in place.  _Remember, concentrate on the moment_ , he heard Qui-Gon say.  _Feel, don’t think_.

_Trust the Force_ , Obi-Wan would have said.  _Trust yourself_.

The bells started; Nakin shoved the controls forward, wind roaring in his ears.  This was it, this was _right_.  He outpaced six pods in the first minute, two more in the second, rolling his pod to duck a sideswipe.  He jerked it up and out of the way as another pod crashed in front of him.  There was a burst of explosions behind him, a scream in front, and Nakin shoved it all out of his head.  He’d never been a violent racer, just the fastest and smartest on the track.

_Keep going, keep moving, don’t let up_.  He rolled his pod again, gunning it while still upside down, and shot forward, dropping down next to Sebulba.  The Dug glanced over at him and Nakin glanced back, wondering if Sebulba recognized him or even remembered him.  His money was on _no_.

The Force shuddered, shivered, fluctuated wildly.  The sky screamed.

Nakin knew that sound.

The Empire had come to Ixtapa at last.

“No,” Nakin said.  “No – _no_.”  No here, not this planet, not this time.

Sebulba was shaking one fist at the landing clone transports, but neither he nor Nakin had slowed down or changed course; both of them were still heading straight for the ships landing on the flat open of the savannah.  At the last possible moment Sebulba swung hard around, back towards Per Macchu, all the while screaming vile imprecations in Huttese.

Nakin didn’t swerve.  He flicked his goggles off with one hand and gunned the pod into the most heavily manned clone carrier with the other, leaping out onto the roof of another as his pod exploded around him, his lightsaber already lit and in his hand.  There was something hot and familiar in his chest, a deep, quick pulse in the Force that beat unevenly but stronger than anything else.

“It’s a Jedi,” one of the clones yelled over the sounds of screams and explosions.  “It’s a fucking Jedi!”

“Take him alive!”

Nakin snarled something wordless and leapt down, lightsaber flashing.  It wasn’t like killing droids; blood spattered hot on his face and hands and clones screamed when you cut into them.  He’d gotten out of the business of killing droids a century ago.

“It’s fucking General Skywalker!” someone yelled over the roar of broken and breaking things.  “It’s Anakin fucking Skywalker!”  The voice was deeper and gruffer than most clones’; it was the same clone who’d ordered him taken alive.  One who’d recognized him; one who’d known him. One who’d betrayed him, personally.

Not Cody; Cody was long dead.  “Alpha!” Anakin yelled.  “Alpha, you damned traitor!”  He sliced a clone neck to navel, kicked another’s helmeted face out the back of his skull, twisted the Force and felt the reverberations of the explosion ripple back towards him.

“Shoot to wound, not to kill!” Alpha roared.  “Stunners, tranqs – I need him –”

The words choked off as Anakin shot a hand out towards him, fingers clenching into a fist.  “You traitor,” Anakin snarled.  “You murderous, treacherous bastard.  Run to whatever master will have you, traitor!”  His lightsaber flashed with his other hand; three clones fell headless beside him,

“Sky – wa – wal – ker –” Alpha was clawing at his own throat, helmet jerked aside so he could scrabble for purchase.

Anakin squeezed.  “Rot in _hell_!” he roared.  “ _Rot – in_ –”

Pain followed by numbness spread across his back and Anakin Skywalker fell.  His lightsaber dropped to the ground beside him, deactivated and harmless.

*

_The Force push sent him flying backwards into the trap.  Anakin thudded to the ground and tried to get back to his feet, but the Force closed around him, holding him tightly as if in a fist, as if in bonds.  “Master!” he shouted._

_Obi-Wan half-turned at his cry, and Anakin realized his mistake._

" _NO!”_

_Obi-Wan fell, cut nearly in half by the long sheer of humming scarlet as the Dark Jedi took advantage of his distraction.  His lightsaber went skidding away from his hand across the polished chromium floor, cutting a ridge in it before deactivating and  lodging against the wall not far from Anakin.  Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were still bright.  He was still alive._

_"No,” Anakin said, “no, no, no.”  He got himself up on hands and knees, trying to crawl to Obi-Wan, but the air was too thick around him, holding him in bindings of dark energy, the Force turned against him now.  Anakin closed his eyes and wept.  He couldn’t seem to grasp the Force, no matter how hard he tried, reaching out with mind and weakly grasping hands._

_Obi-Wan turned his head toward him, lips moving silently.  His lightsaber shook, moving a shaky inch across the floor, and then another, before it stopped.  The light went out of Obi-Wan’s eyes; Anakin felt his death reverberate through the Force._

_“No,” he said again, “No, Obi-Wan, no –”  But he was well and truly caught now, and the Dark Jedi was striding over towards him, stepping over Obi-Wan’s body as if it was nothing more than an impediment in his way._

_Anakin would kill him with his bare hands if he had to._

*

Anakin sat straight up, head pounding.

“You awake?”  For some reason he’d been expecting Basic, but the question was in continental Ixtapan, a soft gurgle that took a minute to process.

“Yeah,” he said in the same language, headache fading but new aches coming to the surface.  He began to catalogue them automatically.  Blaster burn up one arm, another one searing across his left cheek, one broken rib, two cracked, three dislocated fingers, a strained muscle in his right leg, and he’d crushed his left anklebone.  For the fifth time in seven years.  That one was getting replaced by durasteel this time, something he should have done years ago to match the rest of the bones in his foot.

Anakin didn’t look up at the Ixtapan.  One of the injuries he could do something about without using the Force; he gritted his teeth and put his fingers back in joint, vision whiting out briefly with the pain.  When he looked up again, the Ixtapan was staring at him through a wall of shimmering blue.  A Per Macchu lock-up; he’d seen them before, but never from the inside.  The Ixtapan was wearing black leather with red highlights.  A Peacekeeper – the King’s personal guard.

Anakin said something completely vile in Huttese.

The Peacekeeper just blinked, turned his head slightly, and said into the comm pinned to his collar, “The Jedi’s awake, sir.”

Anakin looked down at the blood on his hands, splashed liberally over his clothes, and tried to scrape it off with his fingernails.  “Any chance I can get at a fresher?” he asked, not particularly expecting an answer.

The Peacekeeper just looked at him, one eyebrow raised dubiously, and reached over to press the tip of one finger to the wall beside the force field.  A small square vanished from the shimmering blue field at about waist-level.  “Put your hands through,” he ordered.

Anakin sighed.  “Is this really necessary?” he said and got up, channeling the Force hard into his bad leg so he could support himself.  He limped over to the force field and put his hands through the opening, wincing as the movement tore at the blaster wound in his arm.  The Peacekeeper cuffed him, then keyed the force field off and motioned him forward.  He paced Anakin down the hall, shortening his long pace to Anakin’s limp.

They were in Per Macchu’s police headquarters.  In a shocking change of pace, Anakin hadn’t ever been jailed here, but he’d had to come up to file his resident alien forms after his first year living at The Sand and Stone.  In contrast to the last time he’d been here, the halls were empty of Per Macchu police officers; instead, Peacekeepers were standing at regular intervals along the walls.  He had a really bad feeling about this.

The Peacekeeper escorting Anakin turned him into a small conference room warmly paneled in blond wood from the Radja Jungle and closed the door behind them, standing directly in front of it with his feet spread slightly and his hands clasped behind his back.

“Sit down,” the man at the table said.

Anakin sat, both hands on the table so he could support himself going down.  “Your majesty,” he said warily.

King Elan the Unlikely raised his eyebrows.  “You know me,” he remarked.

“I try and keep up,” Anakin told him lightly.

“So do I,” Elan said, flicking on the dataprojector embedded in the table.  Anakin blinked as he found himself looking at his own profile; the king had called up his resident alien official file.

“Nakin Starkiller,” Elan read.  “Born in Mos Espa, on the planet Tatooine in the Outer Rim Territories.  Aged thirty-four Coruscant years.  Came to Ixtapa eight years ago.  Veteran of the Ten Systems War – a combat pilot.  Applied for resident alien status seven years ago and received it from the Per Macchu Police Headquarters.  Currently resides at The Sand and Stone cantina, owned by Zsuzsi Dj’onz, 58 Priester’s Way, Per Macchu, Merapesh.  Mechanic.  Owns a Serenity-class KarTathi starcrusier, the _Cat’s Defiance_.”

“The _Cat_ ’s Corsyran,” Anakin said.  “My old starship was KarTathi.”

 “My mistake,” the king said.  “Despite three outstanding warrants in the Outer Rim and one in the Mid Rim, a fine, upstanding citizen on Ixtapa.”  He paused, and thePeacekeeper standing indiscreetly in the corner behind him took up the thread.

“So you can imagine our surprise when this message came in this morning,” he said smoothly.  Anakin started at the hint of Force compulsion in his voice, so subtle and understated that either he was a Jedi in disguise or he didn’t know he was doing it.  And Anakin knew all the Jedi.

Elan thumbed the dataprojector again, throwing up an old holo of Anakin from the Clone Wars.  Anakin sat forward slowly, ignoring the twinge of pain from his broken ribs, somehow fascinated by the picture despite his common sense screaming at him to _stop, stop, stop!_

The King’s voice was flat as he spoke; he must have been reading from a file the Empire had sent in the databurst along with the holo.  “Jedi Senior General Anakin Skywalker.  Trained by the Jedi Master High General Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Knighted by the Jedi Council at age twenty-two.  Served as a combat pilot and general during the Clone Wars.  Sat on the Jedi Council.  Vanished in the Purge.”  The King of Ixtapa flicked the holo off and looked straight at Anakin.  “Outstanding warrant on all Imperial planets.  To be taken alive.”

He was too tired, too bloody – too fucking exhausted to argue what was already written in stone.  “What do you want?” Anakin said quietly instead, mind flitting from possibility to possibility.  Just about the only advantage he had was that they hadn’t put Force inhibitors on him yet.  Outnumbered, unarmed, restrained, wounded – he’d taken on worse odds and won, but not as badly hurt as he was now, not with most of his energy gone to healing himself so he could walk.

The King was watching him with sharp eyes.  By all logical accounts, Elan Haa’mlta should never have become king; he was the fifth son of a fifth son, and it was a number of unlucky deaths during the Ten Systems War that had led to his assuming the throne.  Some people said he’d had his older brothers assassinated after his uncles’ deaths in the Battle of KarTath, but whether or not that was true, all accounts said that Elan the Unlikely was one of the shrewdest kings Ixtapa had had in generations.  Padmé would have liked him or hated him; Anakin wasn’t quite sure which.

“There was a personal message sent with that broadsheet,” Elan the Unlikely said.  “Anyone who happened to hand over Anakin Skywalker would be given leeway by the Empire. I could keep Ixtapa.”

“So hand me over,” Anakin said, getting some of his senses back.  He was so fucking _tired_ , but the need to lie was writ too deep in him to tell the complete truth just yet.  “Sure I’m him?  I bet you’d like to see if the Empire actually kept their word, but you’d be wrong to trust them.  And what do I know?  I’m just a mechanic.  Maybe they’ll decide I’m not this Anakin Skywalker after all and invade Ixtapa anyway, and then where are you?  Completely fucked, and without a bargaining chip this time.”

“I wouldn’t hand anyone over to the Empire, Jedi or not,” Elan said flatly.  “I’m the King of Ixtapa; I won’t destroy my honor for a song and a promise.  Other planets have turned over the Jedi who claimed sanctuary there; they were still conquered.  I’m not naïve enough to believe Ixtapa is any more special than Naboo or Sin Galla.”

“That’s good,” Anakin said.  “Considering you’re right.  Now that we’ve established that you want your planet to be razed to bare rock and your people murdered or enslaved, what do you want with me?  Just out of curiosity.”

“You’re Anakin Skywalker.”

“So you keep saying,” Anakin drawled.  “And so the Empire says.  I don’t think I’ve said anything along those particular lines, though, just in case you were keeping track.”

“Ixtapa never had a part in the Clone Wars, but we get the HoloNet out here too.  I used to watch your exploits, yours and the other Jedi’s.  You were – marvelous.”

“The Jedi are mortal like anyone else,” Anakin said.  “They die when you shoot them.”

Elan ignored that.  “You would have won the war if it hadn’t been for the Emperor’s rise to power.”

“Funny how people always say that,” Anakin said, “because when I was there, it didn’t seem like we were winning at all.”

“One Jedi could turn the tide of a battle,” the King continued.  “And we’re about to go to war with the Empire.  We would very much appreciate your aid in our war.”

Anakin’s hands tightened on the tabletop, but he shook his head.  “I’m not going to help you,” he said, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat.  “The Jedi are done.  It’s over.  We’ve lost.  I’m a little too occupied with staying alive to fight your war for you, and that’s even assuming one man would help you at all.  It won’t.  I don’t care what you think you know, or what you saw, but it won’t.  It’s too late for that.”

“The Jedi are legendary,” the Peacekeeper behind Elan said.  “Was that just Republic propaganda?”

“The Jedi are _legend_ ,” Anakin corrected.  “Legends are history.  That means they’re _gone_ , Peacekeeper.  Get that through your head.  You said you’d watched the Empire conquer other planets; then you know that they’ve killed every Jedi that’s crossed their path whether or not they fought.  Putting me in the fight won’t help Ixtapa at all; it’ll just mean your punishment will be worse.  You’d be better off just surrendering while you have the chance.”

“I thought the Jedi never gave up,” the King said.

“That was twelve years ago,” Anakin said.  “This is today.  Sorry for the disillusionment.”

“You’re in my custody,” the King said.  “What if I said I’d hand you over to the Empire?  For the rest of the Ten Systems.  I’ve had word from the other rulers; Imperial dreadnoughts are already maneuvering into position to blockade every planet in the alliance.”

“You already said you wouldn’t hand me over,” Anakin said.  He rose from his seat, testing his injured leg gingerly.  He could put some weight on it; the Force had done its work.  “If I can’t trust the King of Ixtapa’s word, then your honor’s fucked anyway.  That many troops, one man’s not going to help, even if I could.  Find someone else to fight your war for you, your majesty.  I already lost my war.”

*

The Sand and Stone was packed full to bursting, the crowd spilling out of the cantina and into the brightly-lit street.  Anakin shouldered his way through, people moving aside and going silent as they recognized his face and the blood on his clothes.  Inside, the HoloNet was playing the fight over and over again, the podrace forgotten.  The babble of tongues faded to a low hum as Anakin passed.  He wasn’t Starkiller, not to them, not anymore.  The name Skywalker might not mean anything on Ixtapa, but his real name didn’t matter.  He’d never been so aware of the lightsaber on his hip; Elan had given it back to him, the look on his face daring Anakin to put it aside or hide it.  No hiding for him, not anymore, the King’s eyes had said.  Not on Ixtapa.  He’d pay for his own sins.

Zsuzsi saw him coming, put down the bottle she was holding, and went for the chacharan racked behind her.  “What’s going on?” she asked quietly in badly-accented Huttese.

“War,” Anakin said in the same language, throwing back the glass of alcohol she handed him.

“Here?” she said sharply, reaching for the bottle again.

Anakin waved her off.  “Everywhere.  All the Ten Systems.”

“They can fight a war on that many fronts?” Zsuzsi demanded, shocked.

“Easily,” Anakin said, thinking of the Clone Wars.  “They don’t even need to put ground troops down; they can bomb from space.”

Zsuzsi blanched.  None of the Ten Systems had that capability in any force; they’d fought their battles the old-fashioned way, on the ground, in the air, in space – never space to ground.  “What are you going to do?” she demanded, falling back into Ixtapan.

“I don’t know,” Anakin said.  “I’m the one Palpatine wants.”

“And if you give yourself up –”

“They’ll come anyway.  You just won’t be expecting it.”

“Are you sure about that?” Zsuzsi demanded.  “You’re willing to risk the independence of my planet on it?”  In her agony, she knocked over the bottle of chacharan on the counter.

Unthinking, Anakin snapped out a hand in reflex.  The bottle of chacharan caught in mid-air, suspended by the Force.  Anakin stared at it in mute horror, hand dropping.  The bottle fell and shattered on the floor.

“This is a bad day,” Anakin said frankly.

Zsuzsi took a step back from him, glass crunching under her foot.  Her eyes were wide.  All around them, people were backing away, leaving a small circle of empty space around Anakin.

“You Jedi are all the same,” Zsuzsi said in a distant voice.  “You selfish bastard.”

_"They will come anyway_ ,” Anakin enunciated.  “And I will put my lightsaber through my head before I hand myself over to the Empire to get brainwashed or murdered.”  He was shaking, and it took him a minute to realize that the entire cantina was staring at him.  Swallowing hard, Anakin turned away from the bar and toward the stairs, half expecting a blaster bolt to hit him between the shoulders, but nothing happened.

He was halfway up the stairs when he heard Zsuzsi say harshly, “Get out.  All of you, clear out.  We’re closed up.”


	3. Unfinished: A Long Time Gone (version 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point in time it's highly unlikely that I'll ever actually finish the sequel I started writing to "What is Lost", due to the fact that it's not a story I'm really interested in writing anymore. Initially it was meant to be the first story in a trilogy that would also have introduced Luke and Leia, who in this 'verse were raised on Tatooine and Naboo, respectively, and included some other familiar faces from the OT. If I remember correctly (my original notes are from 2007!), the A-plot for the second story was the young Leia Naberrie being taken by Palpatine for training as one of his Dark Jedi and Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padme going on a rescue mission.
> 
> I've got two alternate beginnings for that story; hopefully they're of interest. This is version two (originally written in 2012; I did try to hack it out again).

Nakin emerges from the depths of the pod he’s started building on a whim to find six Peacekeepers staring down at him, all of them armed and none of them looking amused by the current situation. He lets his eyes drift towards his weapons belt, draped over the back of the chair by his work bench.

One of the Peacekeepers snaps his fingers in front of Nakin’s face to get his attention. “Jedi Master Anakin Skywalker?”

“Mechanic Nakin Starkiller,” Nakin corrects, flicking another glance at his weapons belt. His blaster twitches a little in the holster, the strap unsnapping. His lightsaber shifts too, as if insulted by the long years of disuse.

He likes Ixtapa. He really doesn’t want to flee the planet if he doesn’t have to, but fleeing is a better option than getting turned over to the Imperials or, worse, bringing the Empire down on Ixtapa and the rest of the Ten Systems.

“You’re under arrest by order of the King,” the Peacekeeper says, and that means it’s probably option A.

Nakin raises his empty hands. “Look, I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not him –” he starts, and kicks up, heel snapping off the Peacekeeper’s jaw. He sweeps his left arm sideways, blaster flying into it, but before he can pull the trigger the Peacekeeper behind him stabs a needle into his neck.

Nakin’s hand spasms, everything from the neck down going numb as his blaster falls to the floor. The Peacekeeper withdraws the needle, pulling his arms behind his back and snapping a pair of binders onto his wrists.

“What in Sith hells –” he chokes out, his lips going numb, but the words are barely out before the world goes blurry and then black before him and he collapses.

*

Nakin Starkiller wakes up with the distinct feeling that he’s just been trod on by an AT-AT. He sits up, wincing, and is drawn up short by the discovery that his hands are cuffed to the table in front of him, the chain between the binders passed through a metal loop set in the table. He lets his forearms rest on the table as he looks around, trying to figure out where he is.

He’s in an interrogation room, that’s clear enough. It’s a nice enough one, as such things go, with the walls paneled in golden hardwood and an intricately detailed on the floor beneath the table. He reaches out experimentally with the Force, and is unsurprised by what he finds. He’s pretty sure he can use the Force to get out of the binders and out the door, and even with a headache the size of a supernova he’s certain he can get past the guards, but he has to admit a certain amount of curiosity about why he’s here. He reaches out with the Force, spreading it as thin and as far out as he can. No Sith, none of the Emperor’s Hands, no Imperial forces at all as far out as he can tell.

He puts his head back down on the table, feeling tired and a little ill from whatever they’d injected him with. He tries to summon up a little bit of anger at Obi-Wan for bringing the Emperor’s Dog here, but it’s not Obi-Wan’s fault, not really. He’s a Jedi. The Emperor’s made sure that no matter how much he denies it, he’ll spend the rest of his life being hunted for what he is. What ought to be surprising isn’t that they’d found him, but that it had taken them this long and that they’d stumbled over him by accident, not on purpose.

The door opens behind him and Nakin sits up again. “Whoever you’re looking for, I’m not him,” he says, but the lie is half-hearted at best. His fault for getting complacent.

“You and I both know that isn’t true,” says the King of Ixtapa. He comes around the side of the table and sits down at the opposite end, flanked by two Peacekeepers. Two more take up position behind Nakin.

“I’d bow, your serenity, but –” He raises his cuffed hands.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. It seemed the only way to assure you’d come at all,” says the King, not sounding particularly sorry. “You are quite the wanted man, General Skywalker.”

“I have no idea who this Skywalker guy is,” Nakin says.

“Perhaps we can just skip past the denials where you claim that you are not, in fact, Anakin Skywalker and I produce the Empire’s most recent warrant for your arrest, which has a very accurate holo attached, may I add, then you say it’s just an unfortunate resemblance and I produce the DNA results from the sample we took while you were unconscious,” the King says. “You are General Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight. Do try not to deny what we both know is true.”

Nakin taps his fingers on the table, silent for a moment. “And if I am Anakin Skywalker? I’m assuming there’s a reason you didn’t stick me in carbonite and ship me off to Coruscant while I was unconscious.”

“The Empire knows that you’re on Ixtapa,” says the King. “They’ve given me the choice of finding you and turning you over in exchange for joining the Empire or they’ll come and get you themselves.”

“So why aren’t I on a transport to Coruscant right now?” Nakin asks.

“Membership in the Empire is not exactly the prize that the Emperor thinks it is.”

“You are aware that if they come and get me, then they’ll add Ixtapa anyway? And it won’t be pretty,” Nakin says.

The King leans forward. “That’s why I was so eager to find you, General.”

“All right,” Nakin says. “I’m a little confused. The Empire offered to give you membership in the Empire in exchange for handing me over, but you don’t want to join the Empire. But if you don’t, then they’ll come and get me anyway and probably add Ixtapa to the Empire while they’re at it. So why am I here? You might have to use small words. I was always better at the hack-and-bash than I was at diplomacy.”

“Very well,” says the King. “I want to make you the general of our armies against the Empire.”

“What?”

The King repeats himself.

“No,” Nakin says.

“I didn’t think you had any love for the Empire,” says the King.

“I don’t. They destroyed everything and everyone that I cared about.” He clenches his durasteel fist, making the chain rattle. “I know a losing battle when I see one, your serenity. Your desire to stand against the Emperor is an admirable one, but it’s one that will get you killed. The Empire has resources you can’t imagine; even if you put a Jedi general at the head of your army, you won’t be able to hold them off for more than a few days at most. And there are – there were – better generals than me in the Order. Jedi can do a lot, your serenity, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t fight an entire war for you.”

The King’s mouth sets in a stubborn line, the same way Padmé’s had when the Senate had granted Palpatine one more extraordinary power after another. “You seem quite eager to have yourself handed over to Emperor Palpatine.”

“Not particularly,” Nakin says. “The price on my head is, as I’m sure you’re aware, considerable. As I have no inclination to turn my coat and become one of the Emperor’s Hands, the best that I can hope for is a quick death.”

“Then perhaps we can make another kind of bargain,” says the King. “I want to talk to the Rebel Alliance.”

“Noble, but there’s one thing you’re missing,” Nakin says. “I don’t know where they are.”

“You are a Jedi,” says the King. “I have no doubt that you’ve been in communication with them since the fall of the Republic.”

“Actually, no. I don’t know what kind of crazy stories you’ve heard about the Jedi, but that one isn’t true.”

“The incident last week –”

“Coincidence,” he says flatly. “And I gave Ben Hellsbane the same answer I’m giving you. I’m out. I don’t want anything to do with the Empire or the Jedi. I’ve seen too many people die in the past fifteen years, and I am done with it all. I wash my hands of it.”

“You don’t sound much like a Jedi,” says the King.

“Well, I was never a very good one,” Nakin says, sitting back in his chair. “Set me loose or send me to the Empire or do whatever you want with me, I don’t care. I’m done fighting.”

The King stands up. “Think about it overnight,” he says. “I’ll ask again in the morning.”

“My answer won’t change,” Nakin says.

“Think about it overnight,” the King repeats, and leaves the room, the Peacekeepers following behind him.

Nakin puts his head down on the table and curses in Huttese, the sounds rough and guttural on his tongue. He’s just tired, bone-deep exhaustion of ten years on the run, ten years of equal parts not knowing and knowing too much. He just wants it to be over. Why can’t it all just be over?

*

Anakin Skywalker lay awake in the dark and listened to his heartbeat. All around him was the soft, steady sound of breathing – a few snores, a slight hiss from someone’s breathing mask, the stuttering sound of air being passed through gills. Anakin alone was awake in the room, lying across the doorstep with a blaster rifle in his hand and his lightsaber on his hip. He should have been sleeping like the rest of them; the Force web he had laid down in the warehouse and the streets surrounding it would wake him at the first sign of trouble, so he could have slept easy. Anakin just didn’t sleep well these days, not when the Force still burned with the deaths of thousands of Jedi.

It was easier for the Padawans and younglings in the room. Few of them were as deeply connected to the Force as Anakin was, as yet lacking the ties that bound one Jedi to another, the ones developed in the long years of the Clone Wars. They felt it, but not as strongly. For them it might someday pass; for Anakin it never would.

Not all the Jedi on Coruscant had gotten offworld when they evacuated the Temple in the face of the clone attack. Anakin had come back for those that had been trapped on the planet, because the last place an inexperienced Padawan or youngling wanted to be was at the very heart of the new Empire. Padawans Bene and Whie Malreaux had kept their group together and safe for the past few weeks, hiding in the underbelly of the city until Anakin had found them several days ago. Whie’s master had died last year; Bene’s was missing and presumed dead. All the younglings with them were as yet still learners, not yet assigned to a master. When they’d seen Anakin, climbing gingerly around in the huge abandoned sewers of the Warehouse District, half of them had flung themselves on him, some sobbing in hysterical relief at finally finding a Jedi Knight. Bene and Whie had been more restrained, but no less relieved.

Anakin still had connections on Coruscant – well, they had been Obi-Wan’s connections, but he supposed he’d inherited them after – after. His mind still shied away from Order 66, from what must have happened on Utapau. Obi-Wan’s friends were good ones, and Anakin had managed to acquire places on a cargo ship heading to Chandrila, mostly by virtue of paying through the nose. One more day and the younglings would be off the planet – as safe as they were likely to get until they could leave Imperial territory. Ironically the safest place to be now that the Republic was no more was deep in CIS territory. Anakin hoped Dooku was laughing from his resting place in the Sith hells.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. It was missing several slats, and the city lights were visible through the openings. Coruscant had always seemed like such a sanctuary, virtually untouched by the Clone Wars; now it was the heart of the new battleground. Enemy territory. After what had happened at the Temple, Anakin didn’t think he could ever bring himself to relax on this planet again.

Something trod on the web.

Fully awake now, Anakin followed the disturbance down the line of Force energy with his mind. It could be nothing, it could be another Jedi, it could be the Emperor himself, though this wasn’t the usual neighborhood he would have expected to find Palpatine in. The last time it had been someone’s pet feline. This time it was a platoon of clone troopers.

Anakin straightened up, clutching the blaster rifle to his chest, and passed through the sleeping younglings until he found Bene and Whie. He woke the Padawans with a light touch on each shoulder.

“Clones,” he whispered as they sat up. “It might just be coincidence, but I’m going to go check it out. Get the others ready to move fast. Rendezvous Gamma if we have to go; I’ll give you the signal or use your best judgment.”

They nodded, checking blasters and hidden lightsabers, wrapping themselves in their cloaks and moving amongst the younglings as Anakin went out toward the entrance. He climbed the rickety steps that led up to the roof of the warehouse, crouching low at the edge as he pulled out his macrobinoculars to peer down into the street, flicking them to night vision. Clones, all right. About forty of them, moving through the street in formation. This late at night there weren’t many civilians in the Warehouse District: no witnesses to make trouble if a warehouse full of Jedi children went up in flames. Not that they would, Anakin reflected grimly. Most of the residents of Coruscant had taken Palpatine’s announcement that the Jedi had turned against the Republic with surprising calm. As if it was that easy to believe.

Anakin settled the plasma rifle against his shoulder, sighting on the lieutenant with the blue markings on his armor. He didn’t pull the trigger, waiting instead to see if they moved towards the warehouse or just passed by. Their presence here could be a coincidence, but a full platoon of clone troopers, out here in the uninhabited parts of Coruscant in the middle of the night? Anakin didn’t think so.

Another thread of the web thrummed. Anakin followed it out with his mind, throat closing briefly in horror when he found another platoon of clones approaching from the south. Not coincidence, then. His fault; they’d spent too long in one place.

He pulled his comlink out of his pocket. “The number of visitors has just doubled,” he said. “Get the younglings and get out through the sewers. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous.”

“Do you need backup, Master?” Bene questioned. “Whie or I could go with the younglings, and the other could help –”

“No,” Anakin said swiftly. “Both of you go. I’ll finish up here.”

“Got it, Master Skywalker,” Bene said swiftly.

Anakin glanced back at the clones, then rose. He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, getting closer to the clones, until he found one he liked. He settled down at the edge of it, raising the blaster rifle to his shoulder, found his target again, and pulled the trigger. Anakin didn’t wait to see if the clone lieutenant dropped or not, just moved on to the sergeants. He got two more shots off in the seconds before the clones swung around, trying to find where the blasterfire had come from. Anakin rose, crouching low, and ran along the side of the low wall on top of the roof, leaping to the next roof and firing the instant his feet hit the floor. Another clone dropped; Anakin fired again.

“Who in blazes is shooting?” someone yelled. “Find the sniper!”

Anakin twice more, before he ran out of blasts and had to pause to slap another pack on. Returning fire struck chips off the wall behind him as the clones finally found him. Anakin swore, turning around to shoot back.

“Master Skywalker, are you all right?” Whie demanded from the comlink.

“I’m fine, get out of here!” Anakin ordered and swore again as one of the surviving sergeants pointed at the door to the warehouse. The door blew open with a resounding crash.

“Out of luck, boys,” Anakin said, backing up, and took a running leap off the roof, letting the Force carry him through the air and onto the roof of the warehouse across the street.

“A Jedi!” one of the clones shouted. “There, over there –”

Anakin shot him in the head, which emptied his last blaster pack, and slung the rifle over his back. His lightsaber leapt into his hand at a slight touch from the Force; the blue blade sprang into life with a hiss of energy. “That’s right,” he said, parrying blaster bolts as the clones turned on him. “The Jedi are still here!”

He leapt, landing in the midst of the remaining clones, and thrust his free hand out, using the Force to shove one clone back into two more. His lightsaber swung out, shearing through clone armor, and Anakin used the momentum of the thrust to lift him up, his feet slamming into the face of another clone.

Then the second platoon arrived.

Anakin had sliced his way through most of the first platoon by now; he reached out with the Force to pull down one wall of the nearest warehouse on them. Most of them got out of the way; Anakin didn’t even pause for breath before leaping in, his lightsaber flashing.

“Tell Palpatine,” he yelled, striking out with hands and feet, lightsaber and the Force, “that there are still Jedi on Coruscant! Tell him that Anakin Skywalker is coming for him!”

A single Jedi could turn the tide of a battle. But Anakin Skywalker was only one Jedi Knight, sustained mostly by rage and exhausted from lack of sleep, and there were many clones. For a few blissful heartbeats Anakin didn’t care that he was probably going to die on this dirty street in Coruscant’s underbelly, because now he had the chance to fight his enemy face to face. Now he had a chance to do something other than run and hide. Now he had a chance to fight.

A second lightsaber blazed into existence at the corner of his vision, then a third.

“If you are trying to stay hidden, Master Skywalker, then you are doing a very poor job of it!”

“I’ll explain in a minute, Master Swan!” Anakin yelled back, exhilarated, sweeping a clone’s legs out from under him and taking his head off at the shoulders. With minutes the three Jedi had disposed of the remaining clones; Anakin deactivated his lightsaber and grinned at the new arrivals. “Master Swan! Master Choi! It’s very good to see you, but I think we should get out of here before more clones show up.”

“I agree, Anakin Skywalker,” Tsui Choi said. The little Aleena was still wearing his Jedi robes, now rather worse for wear; he hung his lightsaber off his belt and bowed quickly to Anakin.

“Follow me,” Anakin said, ducking into the nearest warehouse. He found the sewer cover readily enough, using the Force to help him pull it free. Tsui Choi and Bultar Swan followed him down, letting the cover settle back into place behind them. Anakin crouched at the bottom of the ladder, pulling a glowrod out of his pocket. The light cast the two Jedi Masters’ faces into sharp illumination – the human’s sharp with determination, the Aleena’s faintly curious.

“How did you find me?”

Bultar Swan showed him the clone comlink on her arm. “There was a report of a group of younglings in the Warehouse District. Master Choi and I thought we should investigate. We didn’t expect to find you here, Skywalker.”

“I sent them ahead while I distracted the clones,” Anakin said, and explained quickly. “I have a way to get off-planet with the younglings – will you come with us, Masters? There are other Jedi on Chandrila, some of those who escaped the Temple during the attack. I know neither of you were here on Coruscant.” He looked inquisitively at the two Masters.

“I would be glad to, Master Skywalker,” said Tsui Choi. “Master Swan and I found each other on Eriadu, then came here to Coruscant in hopes of finding survivors – the rumor is that Operation Knightfall, as the Emperor is calling it ¬–” He said this with faint distaste, “– was not nearly as successful as he would have liked.”

“No,” Anakin said. “Master Windu suspected that something like this might happen – Masters Shaak Ti, Cin Drallig, Jurokk, and Jocasta Nu held the clones off long enough that the rest of us could help the younglings and Padawans escape. Not all of them managed to get offworld, though – that’s why I came back. I had a feeling I was needed.”

Bultar Swan nodded approvingly. “And Master Kenobi? Is he with you?”

Anakin closed his eyes. “Obi-Wan was killed on Utapau.”

Choi and Swan glanced at each other. “Forgive me for asking, Anakin, but then why is his code on the Temple transmission warning Jedi to stay away?”

Anakin sat up straight. “What? I – I never bothered checking the emergency channels, I assumed – Obi-Wan survived?”

“At least long enough to return to Coruscant and reprogram the beacon at the Temple,” Swan assured him. “I would have thought that he’d be with you.”

He shook his head, at a loss for words.

“This is good news, isn’t it?” Swan laid her hand on his arm.

“Yes,” Anakin managed to say. “Yes, very good. I’ve got to – I’m going back to the Temple. Maybe he left me a message.”

“Skywalker, it’s a deathtrap! The whole place is crawling with clone troopers – Master Swan and I barely escaped with our lives,” said Choi, looking alarmed. “And what about your younglings?”

“I’ve got to go,” Anakin said. “If he is alive, then Obi-Wan is all I have left.” Padmé, the familiar stab of pain, but Anakin had made his choice. If it was the wrong one – well, if it was the wrong one, it didn’t matter anymore. “I have to find him. I can take you to the younglings. Will you see that they get safely offworld, Masters? I’ll join you if I can, but if I don’t, padawans Bene and Malreaux know where to meet the transport.”

“This is not a wise decision, Skywalker,” Swan said, frowning a little.

“I know,” Anakin admits. “But if he’s alive, I have to find him. He’s all I have.”

“Attachment is not the Jedi way,” Choi said, slightly chiding.

“Attachment’s all we have left, Master,” Anakin said. “Haven’t you heard?”

*

“Decided what you’re going to do with me?” Nakin says to the table as the door behind him slides open, not bothering to lift his head from his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flashback scene in this draft is probably one of my favorite SW scenes ever written. It is on the list of scenes most likely to be pulled out and given a new context in a different AU.


End file.
